Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME DEPARTMENT

Prisons (Visits by Press and Broadcasting Representatives)

Mr. Arthur Davidson: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is satisfied with present facilities and arrangements for allowing representatives of the Press and broadcasting authorities to visit Her Majesty's prisons; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. James Callaghan): Subject to the need to maintain security and to avoid undue interference with the work of the establishment, it is my policy to grant such facilities and considerable efforts are made to assist the Press and radio and television authorities.

Mr. Davidson: I appreciate what my right hon. Friend has done in this matter. Does not he agree that frequent and regular visits by the Press and by television authorities could help to expose some of the conditions under which both prisoners and prison officers live and perhaps prevent some unpleasant occurrences?

Mr. Callaghan: I think that it is appropriate that representatives of the Press and television should have opportunities to visit these closed establishments. But clearly one must have regard to the needs of the establishments themselves. For example, if a film company asks to operate inside a prison for a week, it becomes a little difficult to meet such a request.

Commonwealth Immigrants (Dependants)

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement as to his policy in respect of the admission to this country of the dependants of Commonwealth immigrants already here.

Mr. Callaghan: I have nothing to add to past statements on this matter.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether those past statements mean that he is or is not prepared to allow unrestricted entry to the dependants of immigrants already here? If that is his policy, how does he define dependency for purposes of this application? How, in view of the difficulties which the Inland Revenue has encountered, does he check on genuineness?

Mr. Callaghan: That is a subject for a speech and not for a Parliamentary Answer. But I can sum up by saying that to prevent a man's wife and children from joining him here leads to social problems in the community. The only way to prevent those problems is to allow families to be reunited. Indeed, it is only common humanity to do so. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that I am here echoing the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and I agree with them.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has been the annual average rate of entry of dependent immigrants over the last five years.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees): Slightly under 40,000.

Mr. Ridsdale: Can the hon. Gentleman give an estimate of the cost to the social services of this number of people over the last five years?

Mr. Rees: I answered a Question which touched on this subject the other day. I cannot give the figure in detail, but from an article in the Economic Review it appears that there was a study which indicated that for immigrants the cost of health and welfare was about national average, of education and child


care a little above and of social security benefits well below the national average.

Sir D. Renton: What average rate of entry of dependants does the hon. Gentleman expect over the next five years?

Mr. Rees: It is impossible to give that figure. While it would be very rash to give a judgement based just on this year, for figures of this kind do not always follow the norm, the figures are lower than last year.

Mr. Ridsdale: ; On a point of order. In view of the vagueness of the hon. Gentleman's reply, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Speaker: Notice should be given in conventional form.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many dependants entering this country in the last two years received or expect to receive full-time education.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I do not have exact information but estimate that, of the Commonwealth citizens admitted for settlement in each of these years, about 25,000–30,000 were under 15 years of age, a proportion of whom would be below the age of compulsory school attendance.

Mr. Ridsdale: Does not this make an estimate of the amount of money needed for education by these immigrants running into tens of millions of pounds?

Mr. Rees: To get absolutely correct figures for all immigrants is extremely difficult, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Department of Education and Science takes sample checks and has sufficient figures to deal with the problem.

Mr. Bidwell: Does not my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that people coming from overseas to work in this country should have the right to draw their families around them when they are legitimately their families, and that in the long run this is the most civilised way to do it?

Mr. Rees: That is a view which has been expressed not only on this side of

the House, but by the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Frederic Harris: How does the Home Office define dependent immigrants? Is there any limit to the number of dependent immigrants to one immigrant?

Mr. Rees: I cannot give a statistical definition, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman. Dependants are allowed in.

Mr. Hogg: Presumably, the figures which the hon. Gentleman has given in the last two Answers relate to some supposed definition of immigrants and dependants. Surely those are contained in the 1962 Act; or is he relying on something else?

Mr. Rees: No, the same definition.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress is being made in setting up a register of dependants in which immigrants claiming wives and children as residing overseas can enter their claims.

Mr. Callaghan: I am not yet satisfied that the compilation of a register of dependants would yield the advantages claimed for it.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Does the right hon. Gentleman remember that last summer he said that he would consider this matter very seriously? I hope that he will be able to make up his mind soon. A number of immigrants come from territories where illegitimacy is rife and where it is difficult to distinguish between legitimate and lawful families and those which are not. Is it not necessary for the immigration officers to have a register to which they can work when these so-called families arrive?

Mr. Callaghan: As the hon. Gentleman indicates, there are many factors in this matter. I have examined it, as I undertook to do some months ago. I do not think that the increase in work which would be involved would bring any great benefit at the moment, but this is one of the matters which could well be discussed in the Select Committee on Race Relations which I believe the House will agree to set up very shortly.

Demonstration, Central London

Mr. Lubbock: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate the additional cost incurred by the Metropolitan Police in consequence of the demonstration on Sunday, 27th October.

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the cost to his Department caused by the Trafalgar Square demonstration on Sunday, 27th October.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will announce the estimated cost to public funds of measures to maintain order and prevent damage during the recent demonstration in London against the Vietnam war.

Mr. Dodds-Parker: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the approximate cost of police and other services to the taxpayer resulting from the demonstration in London on 27th October, 1968.

Mr. John Hall: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the total cost of all the police and other measures, including the erection of protective barriers and the clearing up of debris, necessitated by the demonstrations on Sunday 27th October last; and what part of this cost is to be met by the demonstration organisers.

Mr. Goodhart: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the extra cost to the Metropolitan Police, Government Departments and local government authorities, caused by preparations for dealing with the demonstration in central London on 27th October.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the cost to public funds of the Vietnam demonstrations on Sunday, 27th October; and to what main heads of expenditure is that amount attributable.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the estimated total cost on

the Home Office vote arising out of measures taken in regard to the demonstrations in London on Sunday, 27th October.

Mr. Callaghan: The additional costs of the arrangements by the Metropolitan and City of London police for the demonstration on 27th October would be of the order of £81,000 on the assumption that no man will take time off in lieu of overtime payment. No police were brought in from outside the Metropolitan area. For the Home Office, additional staff costs and other expenditure amounted to about £1,200. I have no information about the expenditure falling on other bodies.

Mr. Lubbock: To what extent does the right hon. Gentleman think it possible to give police officers a day in lieu, so that the full amount of £81,000 is not incurred? Can the right hon. Gentleman comment on the wildly exaggerated estimate, given by Mr. George Gale, of a cost of £500,000? Will he draw the true figure to Mr. Gale's attention?

Mr. Callaghan: The question of time off must, to some extent, be at the discretion of the man himself and the needs of the work that must be done. The matter must be left to the Commissioner to decide. I have no idea where the figure of £500,000 came from. Perhaps the Chairman of the Police Federation was taking the total cost of all the policemen involved that day but, of course, their wages would have been paid whether they were on duty for the demonstration or not.

Mr. Dalyell: In view of events abroad, does not my right hon. Friend think that far too much fuss has been made about the additional cost?

Mr. Callaghan: I think that it would be better to spend £81, 000 on another children's home, for example, but I regard the maintenance of the right of free speech as very important.

Mr. John Hall: When the ordinary individual wishes to apply for police assistance because he is holding a meeting which requires police help in looking after traffic, for example, he is expected to pay for that help. Would it not be only fair to ask the organisers of demonstrations to make some contribution towards police expenses?

Mr. Callaghan: I do not think so. It would, of course, be very difficult to know where to draw the line. In view of the well known disorderliness of the Conservative Party conference, I would presumably have to ask the Conservative Party to pay for police protection. I think we must draw a distinction between public meetings, political meetings and the rest, and I think that we had better leave the matter as it is.

Mr. Goodhart: But should not the extra cost of the police be borne, at least partly, by those who threaten and orgainse violence and not by the law-abiding home-owners in the area concerned?

Mr. Callaghan: I do not think that the figure of cost, unwelcome as it is, should be put into the scale against the desire of between 20,000 and 30,000 of our people to demonstrate their views, whether one likes them or not, on the subject of peace and war.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the Home Secretary aware that while the majority of people in this country would fully agree with that, they are also extremely unwilling to have to pay out of their own pockets towards the cost? Can we have some estimate of what was the cost to Government Departments and public authorities other than the police of protecting themselves, and what was the cost to private persons?

Mr. Callaghan: I dare say that everybody pays taxes which he does not like and I dare say that a number of demonstrators were also taxpayers. But I do not think that we can split it up in this way. I said in my original Answer that the cost to the Home Office was £1,200. It would take a disproportionate amount of time and effort for all my colleagues in other Ministries to get the cost to their Departments.

Mr. Whitaker: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people think that this money was very well spent in maintaining the famous British traditions of freedom of speech and peaceful toleration, but would he enable those members of the public who wish to express their appreciation in a particular form to do so by giving them the address of the Police Benevolent and Orphans Fund?

Mr. Callaghan: I am sure that contributions of that sort would be welcomed, but I do not wish particularly to encourage donations for what the police regard as being part of the day's work.

Sir D. Renton: I do not quarrel with the cost on this occasion, but will the Home Secretary say how much money as a maximum he would consider justifiable for a repeat performance on another occasion, or for any other similar large-scale demonstration?

Mr. Callaghan: I do not see how I could possibly answer such a question.

Mr. Orme: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the cost to democracy, following demonstrations in Chicago and Mexico and parts of Europe, was very cheap in view of the defence of democracy in Britain on 27th October?

Mr. Callaghan: I am sorry that there has been this focus by a small group of hon. Members opposite on cost. The benefits to the country of the absence of social tension following the demonstration cannot be measured in terms of the cost.

Mr. Wingheld Digby: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information he has as to the number of foreign students who entered the country for the demonstration on 27th October.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is his estimate of the total number of foreign students who came by legal and illegal means, respectively, to take part in the demonstration on 27th October.

Mr. Callaghan: About 70 foreign nationals are known to have arrived with the intention of taking part in the demonstration. I have no evidence about illegal entry.

Mr. Digby: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there have been widespread claims by the demonstrators that a number did enter illegally, and that this is much resented by many citizens? Can he throw no light at all on these claims?

Mr. Callaghan: I did not see any of them. I am bound to say to the hon. Gentleman that I found that a number of claims were made, which cannot always be substantiated.

Mr. Peter M. Jackson: Will my right hon. Friend state whether any foreign aliens were arrested on the demonstration?

Mr. Callaghan: Yes, they were, but there is a later Question about that. It was a very small number indeed. If the House likes I can give the figures now. There was one German, one Australian and two American schoolboys, aged 15 and 16.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department to what extent the organisers of the demonstration on 27th October satisfied the police that they would be able to control the demonstration; whether he is satisfied that such control was effective; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Callaghan: Arrangements were agreed with the organisers on the route to be followed by the main body of demonstrators. Apart from some minor incidents and inconvenience to traffic, this self-disciplined precession gave the police no real cause for concern. The police were unable to secure any such agreement with those who were responsible for the separate and smaller procession to Grosvenor Square, where the organisers seemed unable to control their supporters and much disorderly behaviour took place.

Mr. Digby: Did the main organisers give no undertaking at all with regard to Grosvenor Square? Was it not obvious, anyhow, that certain elements were bound to exploit the situation and go there?

Mr. Callaghan: The organisers of the main demonstration indicated that they did not intend to go to Grosvenor Square, and they did not go there.

Mr. Heffer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some hon. Members attended both as observers and actually marched on the demonstration? Is he further aware that the main demonstration was perfectly orderly, and that I believe that the organisers of the demonstration

should receive the congratulations of everyone? Obviously in all such demonstrations there is a certain element which joins and which cannot be controlled by anyone, irrespective of who they are.

Mr. Callaghan: I agree with a large part of what my hon. Friend says, and I am very grateful to hon. Members from both sides of the House who undertook the task of observing what was taking place. I found it very useful to hear their comments. It is true, in the case of any demonstration, that one cannot control who turns up, but in this case there was a separate factional group, determined to march on Grosvenor Square and, as the event turned out, to make trouble there. This was not a case of isolated individuals who joined the demonstration. With regard to offering my congratulations to the organisers, I do not think I really wish to embarrass Mr. Tariq Ali.

Mr. Hogg: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that although this thing went off far better than many hon. Members had anticipated, organisers of demonstrations cannot shrug off responsibility for what happens when they deliberately organise a demonstration of a size which enables dissident elements to behave in an unruly fashion?

Mr. Callaghan: This is true of any gathering of persons. On the previous day there was a football game organised between Birmingham City and Derby County. In the course of that, a lot of supporters of one of the teams ran riot and a number of arrests were made. I do not think that I can be expected to join any cry that we should ban football matches. One has to have a sense of proportion; one has to balance, on every occasion, whatever the purpose of the demonstration is, the need to preserve law and order and the right to demonstrate.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will make a statement on the Government's policy on demonstrations in London arising out of the events of Sunday, 27th October.

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the London


demonstration of 27th October; and what information he has about plans for further similar demonstrations.

Mr. Callaghan: I have reviewed the position following the demonstration in London on 27th October, and conclude that at present there is no need to modify existing policy, namely to balance the traditional rights of free speech and assembly against any possible threat to public order. Future cases will be judged on their merit at the time.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I pay tribute to the police, and incidentally to the Home Secretary for his handling of the demonstration, but is not the likelihood of a repetition of the sort of provocation which: took place in Grosvenor Square in itself a grave threat to our constitutional liberties, and should not the Home Secretary be now considering contingency plans to avoid such a situation again?

Mr. Callaghan: There are groups of people, who go under the names of Maoists, anarchists, Trotskyites and half a dozen other small factions, who are determined to provoke trouble with established authority, mostly in the person of the police, on any occasion when they can find suitable excuse for so doing. I have no sympathy with these people, nor have the overwhelming number of people in the country. A careful watch must be kept of any intentions that they may have.

Mr. Molloy: Would my right hon. Friend agree that the vulgar behaviour in Northern Ireland against Roman Catholics who wished to demonstrate was far more disagreeable than what happened on 27th October?

Mr. Callaghan: The Prime Minister has answered a number of questions on this subject and I am at this moment in discussion with the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland on the matter.

Mr. Fortescue: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the ordinary citizen does not understand why, when he cannot even snap his fingers under a policeman's nose without being arrested and charged, organisations which announce in advance that they intend to stage a riot at a given time and a given place and then do so are allowed to go scot-free?

Mr. Callaghan: No one was allowed to go scot-free on this occasion. A number of arrests were made and some of the cases are at this moment sub judice. The police will continue to arrest those who are responsible when they think it appropriate to do so in the execution of their duty.

Mr. Roebuck: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his sensible attitude on this matter will command widespread support throughout the country? Is he fortified in his attitude by the knowledge that at the recent Conservative Party conference there were the most astonishing disorderly incidents in which dissident elements had their testicles twisted by some delegates? No legislation was required then; the whole thing blew over. Will my right hon. Friend continue in the way that he is going at present?

Mr. Hogg: Without pursuing the rather unfortunate and, I should have thought, unworthy tone of the last supplementary question, either in spirit or physically, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he accepts that one of the factors which he must weigh is that, whatever the legitimate intentions of the main organisation, there must be some limit to the number of times that we expose the public to inconvenience and the police to physical assault? Among the arrests to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, does he include the man who was shown in the photographs as kicking a policeman in the face?

Mr. Callaghan: I am not sure what the right hon. and learned Gentleman's intention is, but I have already made clear to him that I shall continue to judge future cases on their merits. That seems to me to be the limit of my obligation. Everything that I have said has indicated that what we must weigh on every occasion—and we must weigh it coolly and not in any emotional way—is the threat to law and order against the rights which have been built up over the centuries to demonstrate and to free speech.

Sir G. Nabarro: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many Metropolitan Police were engaged in control and other duties in connection with the Vietnam and other demonstrations in London on Sunday, 27th October,

Mr. Callaghan: The answer to the first part of the Question is 8,846; and to the second 74 and 47. As regards the third part of the Question, I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer I gave earlier this afternoon.

Sir G. Nabarro: While I endorse absolutely what the Home Secretary said earlier about the rights of free speech, may I ask him whether he is aware that the overwhelming majority of law-abiding taxpayers and ratepayers in this country strongly resent the extortionate cost of quelling these disturbances and call upon him, as Home Secretary, to prevent a regular repetition of them which may occur from his namby-pamby policies?

Mr. Callaghan: I fully appreciate that the hon. Member must try to get a little back for the mistaken forecast which he made before the demonstration, but if I am being asked to weigh this up on the basis of £s, shillings and pence, I must repeat that it is necessary to weigh the cost of physical preventive measures of this sort against the cost which might be incurred if demonstrations were banned—including the cost of the ensuing trouble which might arise.

Mr. Faulds: Is it not a fact that the popular Press and the not-so-popular Press in the form of The Times were largely responsible for whipping up the wild exaggerations about this demonstration—ably abetted, apparently, by briefings from Scotland Yard?

Mr. Callaghan: I know nothing about briefings by Scotland Yard, although I have seen that some organs of the Press have alleged that this was so. I will not comment on the activities of the Press in this matter. I have quite enough troubles of my own on my plate.

Sir G. Nabarro: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what reserve supplies of water equipment, tear gas and associated riot control equipment

he now has available for Metropolitan Police use in maintaining law and order and quelling civil disturbance, commotion and disorder in London.

Mr. Callaghan: This equipment is not considered to be necessary.

Sir G. Nabarro: Does the Home Secretary realise that the continued use of police horses on these occasions is deliberately provocative and likely to lead to disorder? Will he not consider alternative methods of carrying the police at the places at which disturbances are occurring, and bear in mind that police horses are reminiscent of Waterloo—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—and reminiscent of Peter loo in certain circumstances as well as of Waterloo? Does he not realise that he would be far better off without their continued use?

Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Member referred to continual demonstrations. In fact, there have been two demonstrations this year—two Sundays out of 52. We must keep this matter in proportion. As for the use of horses, I rely very much on the Commissioner's view on such matters. He believes that on the occasion of the last demonstration—and I had some opportunity to see it myself—the presence of horses for particular reasons, into which I need not go, had a very stabilising influence. I do not want to jog his elbow in relation to the methods which he employs.

Mr. Rose: Is my right hon. Friend aware that nothing is more calculated to provoke disorder than the irresponsible and hysterical questions of the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro)? Will he accept that the police methods in London rather than those in Londonderry ought to be the pattern in a democracy? Will he also accept that tear gas is certainly not necessary because the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South is quite capable of moving me to tsars at any time?

Mr. Callaghan: Having read the well-merited praise of the police in the Motions put on the Order Paper by the Opposition and by my hon. Friends, having also read the comments in the foreign Press about the behaviour of the police on that afternoon, and having seen that most of them regard this as having given a very useful lesson in how this kind of


exercise should be conducted, I can only say that I regard most of the questions from hon. Members opposite this afternoon as extremely niggling.

Mr. Hogg: Having regard to the numbers of the police in relation to the numbers of the demonstrators, will not the Home Secretary reconsider his policy of checking police recruitment and bring the Metropolitan Police up to their proper establishment?

Mr. Callaghan: I regret to say that the Metropolitan Police have not been up to their proper establishment since 1945. I do not think that I can be expected to bring them up to establishment in the course of the next 12 months. Substantial recruiting for the police is going on, and it will increase during the next 12 months.

Death Certification (Committee's Report)

Dr. Winstanley: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he now expects to receive the report of his Department's committee on death certification.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I have nothing to add to the reply given by my hon. Friend the then Under-Secretary of State to a Question by the hon. Member for Cheadle (Dr. Winstanley) on 24th October.—[Vol. 770. c. 333]

Dr. Winstanley: As that reply indicated a long wait, will the hon. Gentleman use his influence to ensure more faithful observance of the coroners' rules and to discourage certain of Her Majesty's coroners from spreading alarm and despondency about the pill and anything else which enters their heads?

Mr. Rees: I have not been long enough in this job to have formed a view on the pill. The report should be received some time next year.

Mr. Speaker: Mrs. Short.

Mr. Callaghan: I assure the House that there are no practical experiments with the pill in the Home Office.

Prisons (Security)

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he now has for the accommodation of men and women prisoners needing conditions of top security.

Mr. Callaghan: I would refer my hon. Friend to the statement I made about the detention of male prisoners in this category in reply to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-East (Mr. Bradley) on 24th October. The small number of women prisoners who are in Category A will continue to be detained at Holloway.—[Vol. 770, c. 333–4.]

Mrs. Short: Would not my right hon. Friend accept the view that it is only a very small proportion of women prisoners who need conditions of top security, or who need closed prison conditions at all? Will he consider alternatives which could be used and which would keep a woman within her own home and her own family, so releasing existing women's prison accommodation to relieve the overcrowding of male prisons?

Mr. Callaghan: I am glad to say that there are only four women in Category A and I do not think that I could recommend that they should be dispersed to their own families. They are not isolated, but are with several others in one wing of Holloway Prison.

Mr. Carlisle: As men's prisons are a matter of major importance, may I urge on the right hon. Gentleman the importance of pressing on as quickly as possible with providing a sufficient number of maximum security prisons so that dispersal of those now in security wings could be carried out?

Mr. Callaghan: Yes, Sir. I accept that and I hope that during the course-of the next 12 to 18 months some of the Category A prisoners will be transferred to Gartree, Leicestershire, Hull and Albany in the Isle of Wight as security in these establishments improves. Work is, well advanced on the new wing at Chelmsford Prison which I hope will also pro-vide additional accommodation.

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to introduce more modern locking and unlocking methods in prisons under his control.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Elystan Morgan): Electrical locking and unlocking systems have now been tried out successfully in an existing prison. Similar systems will be provided in all new security prisons and any existing ones which have to be substantially reconstructed.

Mrs. Short: I thank my hon. Friend for that encouraging reply. As prison officers now spend so much of their working day simply locking and unlocking doors, will he take all steps to bring about the introduction of electronic devices so that prison officers can use their time more profitably on rehabilitation work?

Mr. Morgan: I am aware that my hon. Friend has served on the Sub-Committee on Social Affairs and I am aware of that Sub-Committee's recommendations about time and motion study.

Mr. Peel: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he has taken, or proposes to take, to increase security in prisons following the recent attempt to escape by certain prisoners in the top security wing of Leicester Prison which was so nearly successful.

Mr. Callaghan: This escape attempt was prevented, but it pointed to the need for high-quality staff, better training courses and some further modifications in security procedures. Action on these matters is in hand and work is well advanced on the programme of major improvements to the perimeter security of closed prisons.

Mr. Peel: In view of the fact not only that this escape was prevented by sheer good luck but that there were further escapes from Durham Prison three months later, does not the Home Secretary agree that it is necessary to look again at the recommendation of the Mountbatten Report that there should be a separate top-security prison?

Mr. Callaghan: I have already answered a Question about that this afternoon. I do not agree with the hon. Member's analysis.

Mr. Carlisle: In view of the fact that since then there has been a successful escape from the security wing in Durham, may I ask the Home Secretary whether he has received a report on that escape and whether, following that report, he is satisfied with the present arrangements for security in these wings?

Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Member has a later Question down on that matter. As he knows, I put out a statement about the escape as soon as we had discovered the reasons for it. I must point out to the House that we have the continuing, ever-present difficulty of balancing perfect security against a humane régime. It is very difficult to combine both, but I am sure that it is the correct policy to try to do so.

Reading Prison

Mr. van Straubenzee: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has for the future use of Reading Prison.

Mr. Astor: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he anticipates that the use of Reading Prison on its present site, will be discontinued.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: This establishment will shortly cease to be used as a borstal institution. After modernisation work and improvements to the security system have been completed, it will be re-opened as a prison for about 180 prisoners. It is impossible at present to forecast when this site will no longer be needed for prison purposes.

Mr. van Straubenzee: While understanding the grave shortage of accommodation facing the Home Secretary, may I ask him nevertheless not to prejudice the medium-term future position, and to keep his option open on the eventual run-down of this establishment, because it is in a very important part of the County Borough of Reading?

Mr. Morgan: I can give an undertaking that this matter will be kept continually under review but the adaptations will cost a substantial sum. I know


that the view has been expressed that it should be put to another use.

Mr. Astor: Can the hon. Gentleman give an indication of the difference in cost between modernising the prison at the present site, and rebuilding on an alternative site?

Mr. Morgan: Although the buildings at Reading are old, they are still structurally sound. With the present overcrowded position in prisons generally, and the likelihood that the prison population will rise, full use must be made of all existing accommodation. In addition it must be remembered that under the Prison Act, 1952, with the rights of pre-emption, the Exchequer would not benefit to the fall from the sale of the existing site.

Easthampstead (Rescue Service Equipment)

Mr. van Straubenzee: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to be in a position to make available to Easthampstead Rural District Council the vehicles and equipment formerly used for Civil Defence for the proposed Emergency Rescue Service; and whether the transfer will be made without cost.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: My right hon. Friend is prepared to provide the Council with the equipment it requires on the terms applicable to all local authorities. I should not be justified in making a transfer free of charge.

Mr. van Straubenzee: Can the Under-Secretary think of any simple way of explaining to a group of volunteers, who merely want to give service to their locality, why they should pay again for equipment which has already been paid for out of public funds?

Mr. Rees: The equipment provided was formerly used by voluntary workers, and is available to the full-time services. There are voluntary organisations which require people to join them. I would hope that people who were formerly in the Civil Defence Corps would find their way into the St. John Ambulance Brigade, with which I have some connection.

Police Officers (University Courses)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many serving policemen had embarked on university courses in 1962, 1964, 1966 and 1968, respectively; and what he is doing to encourage police entry to universities.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: I estimate that, for England and Wales the numbers of police officers following full-time, three-year, degree courses at the beginning of the academic year were, respectively: 0, 5, 28 and 68.
I hope that these figures will continue to show an increase.

Mr. Dalyell: In view of the first-class results obtained from this imaginative scheme, will my hon. Friend draw the attention of the scheme to those authorities who have, so far, been less enthusiastic?

Mr. Morgan: Some 16 universities in England and Wales have so far taken police students. There does not appear to be any difficulty at all in that respect. Scotland is a matter for the Secretary of State.

Mr. Carlisle: While agreeing that the figures given by the Under-Secretary are certainly encouraging, would he not agree that it is far more helpful to pursue the idea of policemen themselves going to universities through the Police College, rather than hoping to recruit police from people who have become graduates?

Mr. Morgan: I would not go so far as to say that those two matters are of necessity mutually incompatible.

Local Government Elections

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the proposals for changes in the law relating to local government elections which he has recently circulated to certain local authorities.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: We have written to the local authority associations on proposals to abolish the non-resident qualification for electors and, in England and


Wales, the qualification for candidates based on property.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the hon. Gentleman say what reaction he has had from the local authorities to the proposals in Clause 15 of the Bill apart from that from the Greater London Council, the largest of them all, which has said that it is against them?

Mr. Rees: Most of the local authority associations which replied were against them. Scotland is in rather a different position. But, in the end, it is up to the Government to decide what to do, and what we have decided is in the Bill.

Children's Departments (Staff)

Mr. Moonman: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will state the number of social work staff, child care officers, family caseworkers, and other similar workers, employed by children's departments of each local authority on the last available date in 1968, giving the percentage of staff who are professionally qualified caseworkers, those with social science, and similar qualifications and those without appropriate relevant qualifications in 1968.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: In England and Wales, 3,038 whole-time staff were so employed on 31st March last. Of these, 34·6 per cent. held a recognised professional qualification, a further 5·8 per cent. the Declaration of Recognition of Experience, and a further 19·5 per cent. a university degree, diploma or certificate in social science. I am sending details to my hon. Friend and placing a copy in the Library.

Mr. Moonman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information. Would it be possible to examine the question of future trends in recruitment both with regard to the possibility of implementing the Seebohm Report and to seeing whether improvements can be made to encouraging recruitment in the service?

Mr. Morgan: I will bear in mind my hon. Friend's representations. However, I remind him that the total currently employed is 345 higher than it was last year.

Brockhill Remand Centre

Mr. Dance: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has for using the premises formerly occupied as the Women's Wing at Brock hill Remand Centre; and whether he will consider their use for Borstal boys at present serving their sentences at Win-son Green Prison.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: The intention is to use these premises to provide increased accommodation at Brock hill for young offenders, including those who now go to Win son Green Prison to await admission to borstal allocation or recall centres.

Mr. Dance: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many very knowledgable people consider it quite crazy to have closed the women's branch of the remand home? However, his reply will give a certain amount of satisfaction to my constituents.

Mr. Morgan: This matter was the subject of an Adjournment debate some months ago. The wing was closed, not for the purpose of providing additional accommodation for boys, but because the Department found it impossible to provide adequate nursing cover for women and girls.

Mrs. Knight: Will the hon. Gentleman admit that there was absolutely no statute and no rule which forced him to close Brock hill to women? Bearing in mind the need for accommodation and the grievous suffering inflicted on women without this accommodation being avail able, will he now say that he was wrong and will consider reopening it to women?

Mr. Morgan: We were forced to close it not by statute but by circumstances.

Perambulators (Safety Standards)

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will publish figures showing the numbers of babies which have died in recent years as a result of pram accidents.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I have information only for 1967. Twenty deaths associated with prams have been recorded. Sixteen of these were caused otherwise than by


structural faults in the prams; two by folding prams; and two by the prams overturning.

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the inquiry he set up into pram safety following the evidence on pram danger sent to him by the hon. Member for South Bedfordshire.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: There is no formal inquiry. My Department is in consultation with the British Standards Institution and is making certain other inquiries about perambulator safety. I shall write to my hon. Friend about the results of these inquiries as soon as possible, but meanwhile I would strongly urge all manufacturers of perambulators to ensure that their products comply with the requirements of British Standard 4139:1967.

Mr. Roberts: But would not my hon. Friend consider the need for a more formal inquiry? After all, 500,000 citizens are in prams at the moment. This is a form of transportation which we all use at one time or another.

Mr. Rees: The proportion of accidents in prams is considerably less than that among older citizens. Nevertheless, we intend to keep the safety of perambulators under close review. If it is found that prams are being marketed which do not comply with the British Standard, the possible need for legislation under the Consumer Protection Act, 1961, will be considered.

Children's Departments (Committee's Report)

Mr. Moonman: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice he has given to local authorities in awaiting the implementation of the Seebohm Committee Report.

Mr. Callaghan: I have informed local authorities seeking to make changes in the organisation of children's departments which require my approval that I would consider it unwise to take action which prejudges the outcome of present consultations with the local authority associations about the recommendations of the Seebohm Committee.

Mr. Moonman: I appreciate my right hon. Friend's remarks. Is he aware of

the deep anger and anxiety in some London boroughs of staff who feel that schemes are likely to be implemented shortly, thus short-circuiting the Seebohm Report?

Mr. Callaghan: I am aware of that. There is a great deal of disquiet among a number of children's committees and the professional children's workers. It is for that reason that I have advised local authorities that meanwhile they should not take this action.

Oral Answers to Questions — SELBY ABBEY (900th ANNIVERSARY)

Mr. Alison: asked the Prime Minister if he will visit Selby, Yorkshire, for the celebrations of the nine-hundredth anniversary of Selby Abbey in 1969.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): I have not yet received an invitation, Sir, but if I do I shall certainly consider it.

Mr. Alison: May I take it from the Prime Minister's Answer that he is waiting with anxiety, if with composure, for the invitation to reach him? May I warn him that this invitation is likely to be forthcoming only if he will take a personal interest in the replacement of the antiquated Selby Toll Bridge by a modern bridge?

The Prime Minister: I shall, of course, be ready to cross (hat bridge when I come to it—and it will not be the first time. If it is still toll-ridden, as it was many years ago—I do not know whether it is—I would say that I had strong feelings on the matter myself and that I understand the hon. Member's feelings about it. I hope that particularly so distinguished a member of the Church Assembly as himself will not link so secular with so ecclesiastical a question.

Oral Answers to Questions — OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT

Mr. Arthur Davidson: asked the Prime Minister if he will recommend the setting up of a Royal Commission to investigate the working of the Official Secrets Act with particular reference to its effect on Government Departments.

The Prime Minister: I doubt whether a Royal Commission is needed for this


purpose. But I am considering the proposals of the Fulton Committee about the release of official information.

Mr. Davidson: Particularly in the light of the currently over-fashionable use of the word "participation", does not my right hon. Friend agree that the Official Secrets Act should be looked at again to see whether it acts as an unnecessarily inhibiting factor on allowing the public to get the maximum information about the workings and decisions of Government Departments?

The Prime Minister: This matter is always under review under successive Governments, as must be the case, but there could be no question of any review prejudging questions of national security.

Mr. More: In view of the fact that in the United States they seem to manage quite satisfactorily without any Official Secrets Act at all, does not the Prime Minister think that the best course in this country would be to repeal this obnoxious legislation altogether?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. In the United States they seem to manage without any official secrets.

Oral Answers to Questions — PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS

Mr. Onslow: asked the Prime Minister if he will instruct the members of his Administration to give more informative replies to Parliamentary Questions.

The Prime Minister: It is my understanding that all members of the Administration give uniformly informative and illuminating answers on almost all occasions, Sir.

Mr. Onslow: While nobody would ever expect the Prime Minister to set a good example in this matter, may I ask him whether he is aware that hon. Members are continually forced to put down a whole series of Parliamentary Questions in order to extract a half-truth from Ministers and that this devalues the whole process of Parliamentary questioning?

The Prime Minister: I do not remember whether the hon. Member was around at the time, but if he looks at the

records he will find that all of us in this Administration, including myself, give fuller answers and more answers than were given by our predecessors.

Mr. C. Pannell: Has the Prime Minister ever reflected on Stanley Baldwin's dictum on the many-sidedness of truth? Will he bear in mind that a great many of us think that both Questions and Answers are already far too long?

The Prime Minister: I have answered more Questions personally per annum than did my predecessors. If I may express a personal view about Questions, I think that the time of the House might be better employed, and more hon. Members might have a chance to put important Questions and receive answers to them, if we did not have so many frivolous Questions which had already been put the previous week.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In reflecting on his right hon. Friend's comment on the many-sidedness of truth, does the Prime Minister recall his own answer last week about the forthcoming freeze?

The Prime Minister: Yes. It was a perfectly appropriate Answer. It was, indeed, a subject of debate on Tuesday of this week. But when I do reflect on the subject referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), I am amazed at some of the speeches which I read which have been made by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and if the Leader of the Opposition had been here I would have called his attention to the total falsification of a speech of mine at Newtown, for he was on the record as quoting words which I did not use or ever dream of using, but which were attributed to me by him.

Mr. Shinwell: Does my right hon. Friend really expect us to believe that, however uniformly informative the Answers or however uniformly long the Answers to Questions, the Opposition would be satisfied?

The Prime Minister: No. I would not think so. But the original Answer did not say "uniformly informative, uniformly long". It said "uniformly informative, uniformly illuminating".

Mr. Onslow: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Oral Answers to Questions — VIETNAM

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his telephonic and other consultations with President Johnson about the war in Vietnam.

The Prime Minister: We have been in very close contact with the United States Government over recent developments in Vietnam and in the Paris talks.

Mr. Allaun: Whilst rejoicing that the bombing of North Vietnam has now ended, may I put two questions to the Prime Minister? First of all, would he request the Saigon Ambassador in London to request his Government to withdraw their refusal to attend the Paris peace talks so that they may continue without delay? Secondly, do the Government stand by their earlier declaration of support for the Geneva Agreement, which involves giving the people of South Vietnam the right to decide their own Government, and press Mr. Johnson accordingly?

The Prime Minister: I share my hon. Friend's rejoicing, and, indeed, this particular outcome, which is one more step on the road, is one for which we have been working consistently for a very long time. As I have told my hon. Friend before, that was one of the subjects I discussed at considerable length with President Johnson in February and Mr. Kosygin in January. Whatever our disagreements about methods I am glad we have reached this situation. As to the position about the Saigon Government, I agree that it is certainly highly desirable that they drop their objection to coming. With regard to the last part of the question, we stand entirely by what we said, about that particular aspect and all others, for a settlement of the problem.

Mr. Maudling: As the next two months are likely to be of critical importance so far as Vietnam is concerned, is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to tell the House anything of his plans for maintaining communication with both President Johnson and the President-Elect in the light of our special responsibility as co-Chairman?

The Prime Minister: There is a Question about the President-Elect which I shall be coming to in a moment. With regard to contact with President Johnson, this is very close and very frequent, both on a personal basis and, of course, through the more formal channels of the Ambassadors in the two countries and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary's contacts with the Secretary of State. Certainly we shall keep in close touch during what the right hon. Gentleman rightly called the critical two months.

Mr. Winnick: Looking at the war as a whole, is there any chance that the new American President will realise that supporting military dictatorships does not stop Communism but only strengthens it?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is entitled to his rather wider interpretation of these South-East Asian matters. I am not in a position to say anything about the views of the President-Elect on this or on other questions, but I do not think it would help with the difficult two months ahead for me to get involved in the kind of philosophy my hon. Friend has expressed.

Oral Answers to Questions — EXTERNAL AFFAIRS (DEPARTMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY)

Mr. Gardner: asked the Prime Minister what further changes he plans to make in the Departments responsible for external affairs.

The Prime Minister: I have no further proposals to make at present.

Mr. Gardner: Will the Prime Minister accept that one of the most creditable things which this Government have done has been to set up the Ministry of Overseas Development and to separate decisions about aid from decisions about foreign policy? Will he give an assurance that this separation will continue?

The Prime Minister: We have certainly no plans for making changes in the Ministry of Overseas Development. I think that now we have made this major act of amalgamating the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office we should give it time to settle down. I


am sure, even in these early days, that this merger was right, and that it will settle down and prove a success.

Sir D. Renton: In making these new arrangements will the Prime Minister ensure that they are such as to enable the Commonwealth countries to realise that they have a special claim upon our friendship and sympathy and will receive from the Government special attention?

The Prime Minister: Yes, in the arrangements provision is being made for that to continue, and, of course, both my right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and I will at all times be ready to have discussions with them. I have two or three, for example, myself, today and tomorrow. Certainly they have that claim on us, and we have a corresponding claim on them.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Prime Minister if he will consider the appointment of prominent statesmen from the old and new Commonwealth countries on the proposed Royal Commission to be appointed to test the acceptability of any new constitution for Rhodesia, when tendering his advice to Her Majesty.

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Prime Minister if he will state the progress of the Government's negotiations with Mr. Smith, of Rhodesia.

The Prime Minister: On the progress of negotiations, I have nothing at present to add to the statement I made on 1st November, 1968. On the question of a Royal Commission, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his suggestion, but at this stage I would rather not prejudge the membership of any Royal Commission that may be set up.—[Vol. 772, c. 335–44]

Mr. Pavitt: Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that it will be no part of the present negotiations that the personnel of such a Royal Commission will be subject to the approval of Mr. Smith, and that it would be possible for Her Majesty to appoint Mr. Kaunda as president of it without having any difficulty?

The Prime Minister: In the "Fearless" proposals we made it clear that the appointment would be ours. It would, of course, be subject to consultation with the Rhodesian régime. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend in Salisbury will be taking this matter further, but I can imagine President Kaunda himself having some reservations about the proposal my hon. Friend has made.

Mr. Hector Hughes: In view of the slow progress of these negotiations up to the present, will the Prime Minister consider asking the other members of the Commonwealth for explicit and up-to-date expressions of their opinion on the conduct of Smith?

The Prime Minister: I am not sure whether that would speed up the negotiations. Of course, although they have been slow they have to be thorough. While, no doubt, the Government could sped up negotiations by agreeing to an unacceptable settlement, we have to stand firm on the terms we have laid down.

Mr. Ian Lloyd: Has the right hon. Gentleman any idea whether the word "constitution" can be translated into the languages of the Mashona and Matabele peoples? What proportion of them are likely to understand it? How will he overcome this difficulty?

The Prime Minister: I am not an expert in those two African languages, it is true. I think that the extent to which what is proposed will affect the lives of 4 million Africans is understood by 4 million Africans. It depends in the short run on the steps taken by those in authority in Rhodesia to see that there is full and free discussion on all matters, including discussion with African Nationalists, and in the longer run, on speeding up education, so that they can understand the words which the hon. Gentleman can understand.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. Molloy: asked the Prime Minister when he plans to have a meeting with the newly-elected President of the United States of America.

The Prime Minister: I think that this question is a little premature but I look


forward to regular and close contacts with the next President of the United States of America on all matters of interest and concern to both our countries and on wider world issues.

Mr. Molloy: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, but I think I can reasonably assume that at some time there will be a meeting with the President-Elect, so would he not confirm the admirable sentiment of the Foreign Secretary of the urgent need now for United States recognition of the right of China to a place at the United Nations, and, at some time, when my right hon. Friend does meet the President-Elect, would he press for a summit conference where great issues of world peace can be discussed?

The Prime Minister: There is no change at all in the position of the Government on the question of the seating of China at the United Nations and the recognition of China, and on all other of those questions. I am sure our views on these are already well known to the President-Elect. With regard to a meeting with him, I think it is too early to make any suggestion. I have seen Press reports that he may be visiting Europe. I do not know. But he would be very welcome to Britain if he were to visit Europe. I am sure everyone recognises, now that the fury of the election campaign is over and the decision has been taken, the tremendous tasks the new President will be facing, and I am sure that all hon. Members will wish him every success in dealing with those tasks.

Mr. Bessell: In view of the statement made today that the President-Elect may be visiting Moscow, would the right hon. Gentleman consider it appropriate to issue a special invitation to Mr. Nixon to visit this country?

The Prime Minister: It is not for me to speculate on what, so far as I am aware, are only newspaper reports about the President-Elect's plans. I should have thought, with our experience of election campaigns in the past, that the House would feel that the President-Elect will want to catch up on some sleep before he enters into consultations with us or anyone else, and that when he

has done so then will be the time to consider whether there is any prospect of the President-Elect visiting Europe. If there is, as I say, he will, as I am sure the whole House will agree, be very welcome here.

Mr. Ridsdale: Before the Prime Minister visits the President will he do something more to strengthen our defences, in view of the misappreciation by the Government of Russian intentions?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is of course entitled to his view about this matter. It is not a view which is shared by Her Majesty's Government who have responsibility for the defences, and the fact that the hon. Gentleman's criticisms and those of his side of the House are well known has not at any time made the slightest difference to the authority with which we have spoken in the United States, in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Mr. Maude: Will the Prime Minister assure us that in any conversations he has with the President-Elect, despite the pressures which have been brought to bear on him, as instanced in questions this afternoon, he will bear in mind that the Government of South Vietnam, in addition to being an ally of Commonwealth countries, is an independent, elected and friendly Government, capable of making up its own mind on its own foreign policy?

The Prime Minister: I think the President-Elect knows that, so far as the actions of Her Majesty's Government are concerned on Vietnam, we have never given way to any pressures, whether from our own side of the House or from the other side of the House, on matters where we believe that what we are doing is right. I stand by what I, and my hon. Friend earlier, said about Saigon; that it is certainly highly desirable that Saigon should agree to attend the talks in Paris and not get involved in perhaps less important issues of protocol. It will be a disaster, and a matter for very strong recrimination, if South Vietnam does not come, particularly if by such action South Vietnam hopes to hold up the progress of the talks.

BRITISH EAGLE (CESSATION OF OPERATIONS)

Mr. Corfield (by Pivate Notice): Mr. Corfield (by Pivate Notice) asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will make a statement upon the implications of the decision of British Eagle to cease trading in the context of British civil air transport.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Anthony Crosland): I much regret that one of the oldest and most respected of British independent airlines, British Eagle, with its charter company, Eagle Aviation Limited, has had to cease operations.
I have been aware of the companies' growing financial difficulties, but this was a commercial enterprise and the Government would not have been justified in intervening.
The cessation of its operations must cause inconvenience to some passengers, but arrangements are being made to re-book on other airlines all or most of the passengers booked with Eagle; carriers and travel agents are at present busily making such arrangements.
It will, of course, be necessary for any alternative services to comply with the relevant licensing, safety and operational requirements. Subject to this, my Department, which is already in touch with a number of carriers, will seek to ensure a continuity of service to the public, particularly from provincial cities.
I would also trust that any reallocation of services, in advance of the Edwards Committee's report, would not significantly affect the present balance in the structure of the industry. We must, however, await this report before the Government's future policy for the civil aviation industry as a whole can be formulated.
As regards employees, the Department of Employment and Productivity is in touch with the airline and its employees. The Department will take all the steps it can to help those employed by the firm to find new jobs quickly.

Mr. Corfield: May I join the right hon. Gentleman in expressing sincere regret on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends that this distinguished airline should have been forced to this decision, and may I ask him three questions?

Will he now realise that we cannot afford to wait for the Edwards Committee? Will he radically review the Government's policy, as set out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was Minister of Aviation in February, 1965, and ensure a genuine effort on the part of the Air Transport Licensing Board to hold the balance fairly between the nationalised Corporations and the independents, and to cease to give automatic priority to the Corporations?
Secondly, will he now admit, in the light of the increasing proportion of British civil aviation, whether nationalised or independent, devoting itself to inclusive tour operations, that it was folly to increase the landing charges at Heathrow, and Heathrow alone, simply to cash in on devaluation, which increase, in the terms of the I.A.T.A. fare structure, could not benefit the inclusive tour operator?
Thirdly, will he again ask his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to review the whole idea of the £50 travel allowance? It is doing enormous damage to British civil aviation—he will be aware of the remarks of the Chairman of B.E.A. on this matter—and that damage is clearly outweighing any possible benefit it could bring in other directions.

Mr. Crosland: Mr. Speaker, you rebuked me and hon. Members yesterday for excessively long answers, but it is hard to give short answers to questions as long and complicated as that. I shall however, do my best.
The answer to the first question: will we radically review our policy for the industry before Edwards, is, "No". The industry has certainly had a bad year, as have airlines in most countries in the world, owing to the failure of traffic to grow at the rate that had been expected. Nevertheless, a number of firms have shown improved results this year. Most of the firms expect improved results next year. The eagerness shown in telephone conversations with my Department today by many firms to take over the British Eagle services shows a greater degree of optimism than that shown by the hon. Gentleman.
We have discussed landing charges many times. There are two reasons why we increased them. The first was to avoid what would otherwise be a serious


loss of foreign exchange as a result of devaluation. The second reason was, looking ahead, to limit the growth of public expenditure, as we are constantly asked to do by the Opposition.
The £50 travel allowance was not the sole or main reason for the difficulties of British Eagle. There are a variety of reasons which I could list. This was only one of them.

Mr. Cronin: While I have every sympathy for the unfortunate people who worked to save British Eagle, without success, is it not the case that successive Conservative Ministers were warned on numerous occasions by hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House about the risks of this sort of thing happening when they insisted on increasing the scope of private airlines to an excessive extent?
Is this not also an indication of the confusion which will overtake national affairs if we ever have a Government formed by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, with their obsessional insistence on private enterprise when it is wholly inappropriate?

Mr. Crosland: My hon. Friend has great experience of this industry and great knowledge of these matters, and his opening comments were absolutely right. As to the latter part of his comments, hon. Members opposite are doing a disservice to the industry in constantly treating its affairs in ideological terms.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that over 2,000 employees are involved, including over 170 aircrew? Will the right hon. Gentleman say if whether the I.R.C. has made any attempt to help the company? [Laughter.] Is it too late to do so? Will the right hon. Gentleman deprecate the amusement at the failure of this company shown by some of his hon. Friends behind him?

Mr. Crosland: I do not think that it is the failure of this company that has caused amusement; it is the tone of some questions that have come from the opposite side of the House.
No, the I.R.C. has not been called in to examine this industry; it would be inappropriate to call it in while the Edwards Committee is doing precisely

that. In any case, it is not the function of the I.R.C.—and I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman so strongly supporting its rôle—to use public money to aid one of a number of commercial firms in this industry.

Mr. Mikardo: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that he and his right hon. Friends and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, when they were in office, have always enjoined industry in a situation such as this to consult the workers concerned at the earliest possible moment? Does he know that the employees of British Eagle were informed of this shut-down only after the company had informed the Press, and that the company is not undertaking even to pay out money in lieu of notice and has said nothing to them about the fulfilment of its statutory obligations to make redundancy payments?
Does my right hon. Friend think that this sort of behaviour reinforces the plea of hon. Gentlemen opposite for more tenderness towards these private enterprise companies?

Mr. Crosland: I was aware of some but not all of the facts which my hon. Friend has mentioned. Certainly, on the assumption that all of them are correct, which I do not doubt, he raises a very serious matter. In the light of that, I shall now urgently discuss it with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, to try to improve the situation.

Mr. Fortescue: In the light of this news about British Eagle, which has served Liverpool so faithfully for many years, with many of its employees living in my constituency, and in the light of the recently expressed view by the Air Transport Licensing Board that no British airline is able to make its domestic routes pay, will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that he will not wait for the report of the Edwards Committee before doing something to make our domestic lines viable?

Mr. Crosland: No, Sir. I have already expressed the reasons why I do not propose to change basic Government policy before the Edwards Committee reports.

Mr. Rankin: Does this happening not make my right hon. Friend see that there is still too much penetration of British


aviation by private capitalism, and that the sooner that the State spreads its tentacles more widely over the industry the better?

Mr. Crosland: Possibly my hon. Friend might have phrased his point of view more tactfully, but I give him the answer that I have already given to hon. Gentlemen opposite. I do not propose to make any basic policy changes about the industry until we have the Edwards Report.

Mr. Lubbock: I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman must await the findings of the Edwards Committee before making long-term decisions about the future of the industry, but could he not ask that Committee to submit an interim report in the light of this latest and very serious development? Could he also consider the position of British Eagle's employees and whether or not they will receive redundancy payments before other creditors of the airline are paid? Cannot the company's assets be disposed of to pay its employees redundancy money? Will the Minister also say what steps have been taken to restore the loss of capacity on our domestic routes as a result of the failure?

Mr. Crosland: I am reluctant to ask for any interim report from the Edwards Committee. Many of us have long experience of these matters and know that interim reports are seldom satisfactory.
As for redundancy payments and their degree of priority, I will look into that and write to the hon. Gentleman.
As for the loss of capacity on domestic routes, the indications at the moment are that all the more important scheduled services will be taken over by other airlines, though I cannot be definite about that because discussions are going on at the moment.

Mr. Crawshaw: Irrespective of the argument of private versus national airlines, the loss of British Eagle is a great one to the North-West and especially to the City of Liverpool. May I urge on my right hon. Friend that, until the situation is stabilised, he should be prepared to waive licensing restrictions in respect of other airlines which are willing to take on cancelled flights?

Mr. Crosland: In the case of flights to Liverpool, Cambrian Airways is applying to the Air Transport Licensing Board for a variation in its current licence so as to be able to serve Liverpool as a destination from London without the present limitation on its licence.
As regards a waiver, using the procedure by which in certain circumstances I can exempt the need for a licence, I shall do that without hesitation if a clear case can be made out for it.

Mr. Onslow: How can the Minister dare to pretend that there is no connection between this sad event and Government policy over the last four years? How does he dare say that we must wait for the Edwards Report to be put into legislation, which means another 18 months, before anything can be done?

Mr. Crosland: I made no such statement. I merely made a statement about the £50 travel allowance, pointing out that it was only one of a number of factors which have led to the present difficulties.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Further to the questions and observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar (Mr. Mikardo), is my right hon. Friend aware that the trade union representatives on the National Joint Advisory Council for the industry, following the recent redundancies in British Eagle, have been seeking to have a meeting with Mr. Harold Bam-berg, the head of British Eagle, so far with a complete lack of co-operation from him? Can my right hon. Friend tell us what are the Government's plans to prevent this kind of threat to the livelihoods of many decent men and women in the industry?

Mr. Crosland: Again, I am obliged for the information that my hon. Friend has given me about the trade union side. As I said earlier, I would like to discuss the case with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity and decide what action should be taken.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: The right hon. Gentleman said that landing charges at Heathrow had been raised so as not to forgo the currency advantage. Does he not recall that both he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer urged companies,


especially those dealing with exports, not to raise their prices following devaluation because of the effect that it would have on exports?

Mr. Crosland: No, Sir. Neither my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer nor I have ever urged companies, as a general piece of advice, not to raise their prices following devaluation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] On the contrary, we have consistently said that companies must judge their price policy in the light of the situation and the market concerned. A considerable number of companies which could sell all that they are already producing at the existing dollar price have behaved in the same way as the British Airports Authority, and rightly.

Mr. Thornton: Did not the last Labour Government guarantee the payment of redundancy money from a central pool when firms got into financial difficulties and were not able to meet their obligations?

Mr. Crosland: I would not like to answer questions on the redundancy point off the cuff. If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will look into the matter with the Department mainly responsible and see what action they ought to take.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Maudling. Business Question.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Maudling: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Fred Peart): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 11 TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Post Office Bill.
Motions on the Immunities and Privileges Orders relating to the International Wheat Council, the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation and the Commission of the European Communities.
TUESDAY, 12TH NOVEMBER—Supply [1st Allotted Day]:
Debate until 7 o'clock on a Motion on the Town and Country Planning General Development (Amendment) Order relating to Airport Development.
On a Motion for the Adjournment of the House, a debate on the need for a National Emergencies Organisation.
Thereafter, procedural Motion on Suspended Sittings.
WEDNESDAY, 13TH NOVEMBER—Remaining stages of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill.
Motion relating to Charges for Drugs and Appliances Regulations.
THURSDAY, 14TH NOVEMBER—Debate on a Motion to take note of the Eleventh Report from the Estimates Committee, Session 1966–67, on Prison, Borstals and Detention Centres, and the related Special Report.
Motion on the Insurance Companies (Accounts and Forms) Regulations.
FRIDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER—Remaining stages of the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill and of the Sea Fisheries Bill.
MONDAY, 18TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Representation of the People Bill.

Mr. Maudling: May I asked the Leader of the House two points. First, can he tell us when we may expect the White Paper on the Donovan Report? Secondly, when shall be get the Departmental replies on the Select Committee's Report on Coastal Pollution, and may we expect a debate upon it in Government time?

Mr. Peart: On both matters, I cannot give a precise date. On the second point, I will look carefully into the question of time.

Mr. William Hamilton: Concerning Thursday's business, can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that, as this debate ought to have taken place last Session and did not—through no fault of ours—that day will not be counted as one of the three Sessional days for debates on Reports from the Estimates Committee and the Public Accounts Committee?
Further, can my right hon. Friend assure us that there will be a debate and


a free vote on the televising of proceeding of this House?

Mr. Peart: I will look into the question of the televising of the proceedings of the House. My hon. Friend will remember that last time there was a free vote. I even took a different view from some of my colleagues. However, I will bear it in mind.
I hope that my hon. Friend appreciates that it was not my fault that there was no debate on prisons last Session. I thought that I had satisfied a demand for this and that this would have been appreciated. This is certainly the first of the three days set aside each Session for debating Public Accounts Committee and Estimates Committee Reports, two in Supply and one in Government time.

Mr. David Howell: Is it not extraordinary that the Government should have gone ahead of a debate on the new Civil Service Department and that there should be far-advanced plans for a new Civil Service college when neither of the major administrative reforms has been discussed in the House? When will there be a debate on the Fulton Report?

Mr. Peart: I accept the importance of this matter. Indeed, the Prime Minister has said so in the House. I cannot give a precise date, but I will look into it.

Mr. Richard: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has observed Motion No. 13—
[That a Select Committee be appointed to investigate and report upon the activities of Messrs. Maurice Fraser Associates Limited, and their relationship with members of this Honourable House in connection with the affairs and activities of the present Greek Government; that the said Committee shall further investigate and report upon the desirability or otherwise of Members of Parliament becoming associated with public relations firms in advancing the interests of their clients; whether such activities are not inconsistent with the duty of Members of Parliament to maintain complete independence and freedom of action in Parliament; and to report on the extent to which such independence and freedom of action is at present threatened.]
Would my right hon. Friend agree that this subject needs detailed examination?

If he cannot give us time for a debate next week, will he tell whether the Government believe that it needs examination and will examine it?

Mr. Peart: I have read the Motion. My hon. Friend will appreciate that there are difficulties, but I recognise its importance. I cannot offer a day during the coming week.

Mr. Farr: Will the Leader of the House say whether the House can debate at an early opportunity the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement? As he will be aware, negotiations are starting any day now between the Ministry and certain Commonwealth representatives, and there are many important aspects which I feel could be debated in the House, including the absolute necessity of extending the agreement to its full eight-year period of validity.

Mr. Peart: I used to be involved in this as Minister of Food. I recognise its importance not only to this country, but to the countries in the Commonwealth which are affected by the discussions that are going on. I would rather await their outcome before deciding on a debate.

Mr. Heffer: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend's attention has been drawn to Motion No. 24—
[That this House deplores the decision of the Government to refer the modest interim settlement agreed to by the building trade unions and employers to the National Board for Prices and Incomes; further feels that if persisted in then grave industrial unrest could develop in the industry, which can have serious results for the economy; and therefore calls upon the Government to withdraw the reference immediately.]
That Motion has now been signed by 75 of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that there will be an early debate on this matter, because, unless something is done about it, there is likely to be widespread industrial unrest in the building industry.

Mr. Peart: I have read the terms of the Motion. I know that my hon. Friend and his colleagues feel very strongly on the matter. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works


made a statement yesterday, on behalf of the First Secretary, dealing with reference to the National Board for Prices and Incomes. If it was necessary to enforce a standstill, an Order would have to be laid before the House and it would be subject to a negative Resolution.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In view of the constitutional and individual importance to every Member of the Representation of the People Bill, can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that, at the conclusion of the Second Reading debate on 18th November, he will move the necessary Motion to provide for discussion of the Committee stage on the Floor of the House?

Mr. Peart: That is all right, yes.

Mr. Strauss: As this is a constitutional issue on which all parties are divided, and as the Home Secretary expressed the view in the House that when we come to the matter it should be basically decided by right hon. and hon. Members themselves, can my right hon. Friend say that we will have a free vote?

Mr. Peart: Actually, this is the responsibility of the Chief Whip, and not the Leader of the House. The Chief Whip will note what my right hon. Friend has said.

Sir E. Boyle: Returning to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. David Howell), would the Leader of the House agree that it is desirable that we should have the debate on the Fulton Report before Christmas, especially bearing in mind the important decisions which are being taken by way of implementing that Report?

Mr. Peart: I accept that this is a very important matter affecting our Civil Service and its administration. I believe that the Report should be discussed. It is just a matter of timing.

Mr. W. T. Williams: As the activities of the Minister of Technology in the reconstruction of the nuclear energy industry are giving rise to a good deal of uneasiness among workers in that industry, will my right hon. Friend use his influence with that Minister to persuade him, if possible, to make a statement to the House about what is happening, or issue a White Paper?

Mr. Peart: I will convey the views of my hon. and learned Friend to the Minister of Technology.

Sir G. Nabarro: Is the Leader of the House aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maude) and my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) and myself, concerning the Motion on the building and civil engineering interim wage settlement, are supported by 80 Labour Members?
In view of the disruptive influences of the decision of the Government in this matter, which might bring the major part of the building and civil engineering industry to a standstill in the near future, pending the answer from Aubrey Jones, could the right hon. Gentleman find time for a debate next week on this supremely important matter of all-party interest, and not just the parochial interest of hon. Members opposite?

Mr. Peart: I note that for once the hon. Member is in good company. I have stated the position. Not next week.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: As all the political parties, the trade union movement, the overwhelming majority of the people in the country and Members of the House are in favour of the principle of No. 24, why trouble to have a debate? Why do not the Government operate their policy of accepting the will of the people and accept the Motion?

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot debate now a subject that we will debate if we get time for it. The hon. Member must ask for time.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am asking the Minister, rather than to allocate time which he says he cannot find, to accept the Motion and thus save time.

Mr. Speaker: It is not a business question to ask for no business.

Mr. John Smith: Could we debate the Services Committee's Report on a new Parliamentary building? This is for the fourth time of asking.

Mr. Peart: That may be so. I know that it is important. This is a matter for the Services Committee, of which I am Chairman, but I could not find time next week.

Mr. Faulds: Will my right hon. Friend draw the attention of those responsible to the fact that the new television annunciators scattered about the House are neither as efficient nor as arresting as the old ticker machines, which were also cheaper? May we have the old ones returned?

Mr. Peart: I sympathise with my hon. Friend's point of view, but the decision has been taken to change to television screens.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: May we have an assurance that the House will have a two-day debate on the White Paper on House of Lords Reform? Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the White Paper raises very wide issues, not only in relation to the House of Lords but to the Constitution, the Executive and even the Monarchy? There is no unity on either side of the House about this matter, whatever the consultations between the two Front Benches. In view of the very wide issues, will he give a full two-day debate?

Mr. Peart: I agree that this is a very important constitutional matter and that we should have the usual talks through the usual channels.

Mr. Macdonald: May I revert to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard)? Has my right hon. Friend heard suggestions that some hon. Members are in financial relationship with Common Market "front" organisations? If he does give time for the debate suggested, will he ensure that the terms are sufficiently wide to take that aspect into account as well?

Mr. Peart: Individual hon. Members are connected with many organisations of varying character, no doubt honourably, in the vast majority of cases. I certainly would not comment on any particular matter at this stage. My hon. Friend's question underlines why this is such a difficult problem.

Mr. Channon: In view of the President of the Board of Trade's statement about the sale of the Duccio yesterday and his assurance that he is considering what form an inquiry should take, will the Leader of the House press him to make another statement at the earliest opportunity, preferably next week?

Mr. Peart: I will convey the hon. Gentleman's view to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.

Mr. Murray: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will have seen Motion No. 16, about flooding. If he has, he will, I am sure, grant time next week even by the cancellation of some other topic.
[That this House notes the weather forecasts issued by the Meteorological Office for the period containing as they did such phrases as, periods of rain, prolonged and heavy at times and congratulates them; believes, however, that by the use of more forceful terminology more could be done to alert the general public that something more than a period of wet weather was about to occur; and whilst not expecting them to reach the excellence of the concise and unambiguous forecast contained in Genesis, Chapter 7, Verse 4, commends it to their reading in order that they shall have a standard to aim at.]

Mr. Peart: I have taken note of the Motion. While I admire its forceful and precise terminology—Genesis, Chapter 7, Verse 4—I remind my hon. Friend that that section of Genesis conveys a statement of intent rather than a weather forecast, and—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman must not discuss the merits of the Motion. He has been asked for time.

Mr. John Page: In view of the great uncertainty in the civil engineering and building industry, when can we expect a statement from the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity on the present position? A statement should be made either by Monday or very soon afterwards, if that can be arranged.

Mr. Peart: I will convey the hon. Gentleman's view to my right hon. Friend. If a statement is necessary, of course she will make it.

Mr. Leadbitter: Can my right hon. Friend give more precise information about the Hunt Report and when it will be published? In view of its importance and my reference recently to the need to debate regional problems, if my right


hon. Friend cannot find time next week will he see that the matter is debated at the earliest opportunity?

Mr. Peart: I am aware of the regional problems and of the matters being examined by the Committee. I cannot give a date for a debate on the Report. I remind my hon. Friend that regional development was discussed during the debate on the Loyal Address, when he himself made a very powerful speech. But I cannot promise a debate.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must remind the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) that there is no second round on business questions.

Sir C. Taylor: Will the Leader of the House provide literally two minutes for Motion No. 4, which has been signed by over 100 right hon. and hon. Members of all parties, so that it can be moved formally and disposed of quickly? In this way, we could put the laudable motives behind the Motion into practice.
[That this House wishes to congratulate all the police who were on duty in London on 27th October, 1968, for their efficiency, good discipline and tolerance under great provocation; requests Mr. Speaker to send a letter of commendation on behalf of the whole House to all concerned especially thanking those who gave up their leave periods to be on duty; and, furthermore, wishes to place on record their admiration of the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police who in the interests of the liberty of all Her Majesty's subjects decided not to invoke his powers to ban the demonstration.]

Mr. Peart: I am always grateful for any Motion which seeks to pay tribute to public services. The conduct of the police during the recent demonstration was impeccable. As Leader of the House, I pay my tribute to them. I cannot find time for a debate, but I will consider the hon. Gentleman's suggestion.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: When will the right hon. Gentleman find time for two matters of Welsh interest? The first concerns

the new responsibilities of the Secretary of State, announced by the Prime Minister. The second concerns the 1967 White Paper on Local Government in Wales. Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that these two matters are not shoved into the parliamentary overflow?

Mr. Peart: These may be suitable matters for discussion in the Welsh Grand Committee.

Mr. Crouch: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that opinion is growing on both sides of the House about the need for an early debate on the services of the House? Tonight, we are to be asked to appoint the Select Committee on Services. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the concern among right hon. and hon. Members. I hope that he will show some urgency, if not for the rebuilding of the House of Commons, at least to how we can modernise and make ourselves more efficient.

Mr. Peart: My colleagues on the Services Committee, of which I was Chairman for a short time, are well aware of these matters. The Committee has discussed them. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members recently made representations. This is a very important subject. It may well be that, at a later date, we shall report to the House on these matters, including the question of a new building.

Mr. English: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many hon. Members on this side of the House support the view of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch)? Is he further aware that hon. Members on this side have shown, by their answers to a questionnaire, that they are much in favour of improving the services in the House?

Mr. Peart: I am aware of that. I agree with hon. Members. It is an important matter affecting the work of all right hon. and hon. Members in the House.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

BILL PRESENTED

AGRICULTURE (SPRING TRAPS) (SCOTLAND)

Bill to make provision with respect to the termination of the power to authorise by Order under Section 50(4) of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act 1948 the use of spring traps other than approved traps in Scotland, presented by Mr. William Ross; supported by Mr. Norman Buchan; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 10.]

Orders of the Day — FOREIGN COMPENSATION BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

4.7 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. William Whitlock): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The subject of the Baltic claims has been frequently referred to in this House. It is, accordingly, with satisfaction that I am able to move the Second Reading of this Bill. At last, there is the prospect of compensation being paid to the claimants.
As many hon. Members will recall, in 1940 Soviet influence was established over the Baltic states and sweeping measures of nationalisation of property took place. The Baltic States were incorporated into the Soviet Union early in August, 1940. These incorporations have been recognised de facto by Her Majesty's Government but have not been recognised de jure. That remains our position. There are no independent Baltic Governments in existence.
The property of a number of British nationals was seized without compensation and Soviet authorities did not accept responsibility for the external debts of the Baltic States, including three external loans—the Riga loan, the Estonian loan and the Vilna loan—which had been placed in London.
Shortly after the Soviet Government established their authority in the Baltic States, they attempted to secure the surrender of the gold reserves of the three Baltic central banks which were deposited in London. To safeguard British interests, these were frozen under wartime powers. In retaliation, the Soviet Government ceased payment on the Lena and Tetiuhe Notes—promissory notes which were issued in the 1930s to two English companies and which matured over a period of years up to 1954.
Other losses were incurred by United Kingdom nationals as a result of Soviet measures in certain other parts of Eastern Europe which were ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Roumania between 1939 and 1951—the ceded territories, as they are called.
Between 1940 and 1959, the British and Soviet Governments discussed the question of outstanding claims in a lengthy diplomatic correspondence. In 1959, agreement was reached for the holding of negotiations covering the various categories of claims which had arisen after 1st January, 1939. To prepare for these negotiations, an Order in Council was made in 1959 under the Foreign Compensation Act, 1950, providing for the registration of claims on the British side by the Foreign Compensation Commission. We then submitted to the Soviet Government the registered claims, along with some others which did not require registration. The Soviet claims consisted of claims to the Baltic gold, claims in respect of some Baltic ships requisitioned by us during the war, and some miscelleanous property claims.
Negotiations began in earnest in 1965 in London and continued for two years. A detailed examination of individual claims was made on Soviet insistence and naturally took time. Neither side acepted liability as a matter of law, but some progress was made towards agreement on the existence and value of some of the assets claimed on either side.
As for the Soviet claims, there can be no argument about the value of the gold of the former Baltic central banks. The weight of the deposits was known to the Soviet athorities and, as the House knows, when the gold was sold in June, 1967, it realised £5·8 million. This was the principal asset in Her Majesty's Government's posession which was claimed by the Soviet Government.
On our side, there was similarly little room for argument about the value of the unredeemed Soviet State Notes issued to the Lena and Tetiuhe Companies which total £2·18 million, or about the value of the external bonds which had been issued in London by Estonia and by the cities of Riga and Vilna, the face value of which plus arrears of interest amounted to some £2·75 million. But the total amounts of the claims presented by either side were approximately £15 million on the United Kingdom side and £10 million on the Soviet side, and they included many disputed items.
At this point, I cannot emphasise too strongly that a figure of £15 million for the British claims represents simply the sum of the values put upon their claims

by the individual claimants themselves. To be frank, perhaps some of the claims would not stand impartial scrutiny, or, as is quite natural, were somewhat inflated. The Soviet side certainly did not recognise the existence of liabilities of the amount of £15 million and nor does the figure of £10 million for claims on the Soviet side mean that there are assets of that amount in the control of Her Majesty's Government and available for distribution to the British claimants. When I come to the question of distribution, I shall try to give hon. Members an estimate which will give a more accurate indication of what claimants may expect from the distribution, though it will still be only an estimate.
As I have said, the negotiations concerning the validity and valuation of these claims were difficult, and no real progress could be made on the crucial question of legal liability. Weeks of meetings in Moscow in 1965 and in London in 1966 produced no prospect of agreement between the two sides which would have matched the legitimate claims of the United Kingdom with a Soviet recognition of liabilities of approximately equal value. By the end of 1966, the Government had become convinced that the only way to end the deadlock was to seek agreement on a basis which would mean that each side, without admitting liability, would undertake not to pursue its claim against the other. This the Soviet Government would not accept.
During the visit of the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr. Kosygin, to London, in February, 1967, the final stage of the discussion was reached. In monetary terms the respective positions of the two sides was still far apart, but agreement was reached as announced in the communiqué at the conclusion of Mr. Kosygin's visit. The settlement briefly was that neither side would pursue further the claims which it had presented and which had formed the subject of the negotiations.
The British Government agreed to pay out of the assets the sum of £500,000 in the form of consumer goods to the Soviet Government. The consumer goods were to be additional to Russian purchases under the current five-year trade agreement. The sum of £500,000 represented a small proportion of the assets which we held. In the Government's view, this


was a necessary concession to achieve a negotiated agreement, and the settlement preserved the point of principle that we did not recognise Soviet title to any part of the assets.

Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker: As our claim against the U.S.S.R. is much greater than its claim against us, why did the British Government pay £500,000?

Mr. Whitlock: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make my own speech in my own way, perhaps I will come to that point.
Perhaps I can say now why it is necessary to make any payment and tell the hon. Member and others why we do not simply distribute the assets which we held. I remind them that unilateral action of that kind had been open to successive Governments since 1940, all of whom had rightly shrunk from such a course. We needed to be absolutely sure of our rights and that assurance has been secured by this settlement. Legal considerations apart, it is as a rule much better to settle these matters by agreement than to proceed by unilateral action which may lead to repercussions which would outweigh the immediate benefits. We were quite satisfied that agreement would not be possible on any better terms.
In the statement on 12th February, 1967, upon the close of Mr. Kosygin's visit, it was provided that the terms of the settlement would be formulated after further discussion between the two sides. These discussions led to the signature on 5th January, 1968, of the agreement finally settling the matter between the two Governments. The agreement has been presented to Parliament as Cmnd. 3517.
Article 1 of the Agreement provides that the British Government will not pursue further the claims which were the subject of negotiations. In brief, these claims consisted of property claims put forward on behalf of British nationals, some of them former members of British communities in Eastern Europe, commercial and financial claims put forward by British firms which had not been paid for goods exported to the territories concerned or which had interests in local companies before the war, claims in

respect of the three sterling loans and, finally, the British Government claims.

Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish: The Foreign Secretary told me in the House that this agreement
will be subject in due course to Parliamentary approval".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd January, 1968; Vol. 757, c. 210.]
Has that approval been sought and obtained? If not, why not?

Mr. Whitlock: The payment of the £500,000 was made initially from the Civil Contingency Fund in March and approved by a Supplementary Estimate in respect of it.

Sir T. Beamish: I meant the Agreement, not the £500,000.

Mr. Whitlock: The Agreement has been discussed by the House, and now forms part of the Bill.
Article 2 of the Agreement provides that the Soviet Union will not pursue the claims which it presented in relation to property in this country. The property had been reported to the Custodians of Enemy Property, in 1941, when the Baltic States were over-run by the German armies, and some of it had been vested in the Custodians under the Trading with the Enemy Act. By far the largest part of the Soviet claim related to the gold of the former central banks of the Baltic States.
Article 4 provides that the British Government will make a settlement, along with other claims, of the claims of the holders of unredeemed promissory notes issued to the Lena and Tetiuhe companies before the last war. It had been agreed in 1959 that these notes should be included within the scope of the negotiations. Some hon. Members may wish to ask why those two companies had to be brought into the settlement and singled out by a separate Article in the Agreement. Therefore, I shall give the facts, as briefly as possible, concerning those claims, which are in some ways exceptional.
The Lena Goldfields Company and the Tetiuhe Mining Corporation both invested large sums in the Soviet Union while operating concessions which they held between 1925 and 1934. The Tetiuhe concession was terminated in 1931. The Lena goldfields concession


provided for arbitration, and resort was necessary to an arbitration tribunal, which, in 1930, awarded the company compensation of about £13 million. The award was not accepted by the Soviet authorities. Some years later the company received £3 million, for the most part in the form of promissory notes redeemable at intervals until 1954.
The outstanding notes thus represent deferred and inadequate compensation from the Soviet Government, which stopped redeeming them in 1940. In that year, as I have said, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States and attempted to secure their gold reserves, which were deposited in London and of which mention is made in Article 2 of the Agreement. On grounds of duress, Her Majesty's Government refused to release the gold. In retaliation, the Soviet Union ceased to redeem the Lena and Tetiuhe Notes.
It is only just that the noteholders should be compensated, irrespective of nationality, since they all alike suffered loss as a result of the Soviet retaliation for the British action in blocking the Baltic gold in defence of British interests. That is the justification for Article 4.
Article 5 make provision for the payment to the Soviet Government of the £500,000 in consumer goods to which I have referred.
Before I leave the Agreement and turn to the Bill, I will say a few words about the suggestion which has been made in the past by some hon. Members opposite, to the effect that this Agreement with the Soviet Union is morally questionable. It seems to be feared by some hon. Members, whose feelings I respect though I do not share them, that by disposing in this way of the Baltic assets in this country the Government are doing a deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of the three Baltic nations. With respect, I think that this attitude is mistaken.
British owners have been deprived of their properties in the Baltic States as a result of nationalisation laws and other measures, and after 28 years they have not yet received any compensation. In the absence of any independent Baltic Government with which a settlement could be negotiated, we have had recourse to the Soviet Government, which is the de facto Government of the former

Baltic States. This is the best that could be done, and in the circumstances it is justifiable to take Baltic assets in this country.
If the previous Conservative or present Administrations had followed the logic of those who hold that the Baltic assets should remain inviolate, there could have been no negotiations with the Soviet Union, and no Agreement; but neither would the preservation of the assets have brought the least benefit to the people of those territories. As I have made clear, the Government could not agree to hand the assets over to the Soviet Union. But to leave them alone would do no good to anyone, whereas we had a duty towards the British claimants.
In the circumstances, the Government believe that a negotiated settlement with the Government exercising de facto authority in the Baltic States was the only sensible course. If independent Governments were to be set up in the Baltic States, and were recognised de jure by Her Majesty's Government, that would be a new situation which is certainly not in contemplation at the present time; and no one will seriously expect the Government to pledge themselves to a certain course of action in entirely hypothetical circumstances.
The conclusion of the Agreement cleared the way for the introduction of the Bill, which has two main purposes. First, the powers under the Trading with the Enemy Act, 1939 are extended by Clause 1 to give power to dispose of the assets still remaining in this country. The money raised from the disposal of the assets will be used in part to recoup the sum of £500,000 which was paid to the Soviet Government in accordance with the arrangements set out in Article 5 of the Agreement of 8th January, 1968.
For the most part, the money will be paid to the Foreign Compensation Commission for distribution to claimants. In the meantime, the Custodians have converted most of the assets into cash under their existing powers, and this money is earning interest for the benefit of the claimants.
The second main purpose of the Bill is to enable an Order in Council to be made authorising the Foreign Compensation Commission to distribute moneys which it will receive from the disposal of


the Baltic assets. This purpose is achieved by Clause 2(2). The Foreign Compensation Commission has acquired considerable experience in distributing compensation to persons who lost their property as a result of measures of nationalisation in Eastern Europe. This experience will be useful in nationalisation claims arising in the Baltic States and the ceded territories.
The subsidiary purpose of the Bill is to make three small amendments to the Foreign Compensation Act, 1950. At present, the Act applies only to agreements with foreign Governments, and enables the Foreign Compensation Commission to be used for the registration of claims only when an agreement is contemplated. Sub-sections (1) and (3) of Clause 2 broaden the scope of Section 3 of the 1950 Act in two respects.
First, it will enable the Foreign Compensation Commission to be used where compensation by any other country, not merely any foreign country, is involved—that is to say, where a Commonwealth country is involved. I can assure the House that no compensation settlement with any Commonwealth Government is in prospect at present, but it is not inconceivable that a case of such payment might arise in the remoter future and it may then be convenient for the Foreign Compensation Commission to be used to distribute it.
Secondly, subsection (3) of Clause 2 would widen the existing provision so that such an Order can be made in anticipation of negotiations with any other Government and not merely when such negotiations are already in contemplation. I am sure that the House will agree that these are useful extensions of the existing power.
The third subsidiary purpose of the Bill, which will be found in subsection (4) of Clause 2, provides that Section 2(3) of the Foreign Compensation Act, 1950 shall cease to have effect. This subsection relates to the appointment by Commonwealth Governments of additional members of the Foreign Compensation Commission for the purpose of determining applications for compensation received by the United Kingdom Government on behalf of Commonwealth nationals.
It is defective in that it enumerates the Governments of the independent Commonwealth countries as they stood in 1950 and has not since been brought up to date. Use has been made of this subsection only once, many years ago, and it seems in modern circumstances highly improbable that the United Kingdom Government will negotiate again on behalf of the nationals of other Commonwealth countries. It seems best, therefore, to repeal the subsection.
The House will have noticed that there is nothing in the Bill to do with the subject of distribution. The terms of the distribution will be contained in an Order in Council to be made under Clause 2 subsection (2) of the Bill. The Order will be made at the first opportunity after the Bill is passed. It is, however, appropriate for me at this point to give the House details of the proposals with regard to distribution.
We intend to include all the claims arising after 1st January, 1939, in the various categories listed in paragraphs (a) and (b) of Article 1 and in Article 4 of the Agreement of 5th January, 1968; that is to say, that applications will not be restricted only to those who registered claims under the 1959 Order. We know that there exist a few claims which were not registered in time under the Order, and we think it right to include them since there will be no further opportunity for them to be pursued.
First, there are the claims for property and financial losses in the Baltic States and the "ceded territories"—nationalised property, bank balances, commercial debts—and the Government's own claims. United Kingdom nationals at the date of the coming into force of the distribution Order will be eligible to apply; the claimant will have to establish title to the property, and that it was owned by a United Kingdom national at the time of loss.
Then there are the bonds and the shares. As specified in the Registration Order of 1959, the bonds or shares must have been owned by United Kingdom nationals on 23rd November, 1959. Most of these claims are in respect of bearer documents, and even in the case of registered shareholdings the records of the companies concerned are no longer available. This means that there would


be practical difficulties about establishing the past ownership of these documents.
The first date for establishing British interest was, therefore, fixed at 23rd November, 1959—shortly before the Registration Order was published. But, as with other categories of claims, only those persons who are United Kingdom nationals at the date when the distribution Order comes into force will be eligible to apply. In the case of the bonds the applicant must also be the beneficial owner at that date.
Finally, there are the promissory notes issued to the Lena and Tetiuhe Companies to which I have already referred.
The value of the assets is likely to be about £6 to £7 million from which the payment to the Soviet Union under Article 5 subsection 1 of the Agreement has to be deducted. The available sum will form a common pool from which every claimant will receive a uniform divident on the assessed value of his claim.
The capital value of the claims which were presented on our side in the negotiations amounted to £13·5 million. They included the external State and State guaranteed bonds of the Baltic States—with a capital value of £1·2 million-commercial debts and bank balances—£1·25 million—nationalised property and shareholdings—£7·5 million—the Lena and Tetiuhe Notes—£2·2 million—and Her Majesty's Government's claims—£1·3 million. As against these claims, the Russians accepted liabilities of less than £3 million. No doubt their capital value as assessed will lie somewhere between the two figures of £13·5 million and £3 million.
The Order in Council will provide that the Foreign Compensation Commission shall assess the external bonds and the Lena and Tetiuhe Notes at nominal value, the commercial debts and bank balances at the amounts which were outstanding at the time of loss in 1939–40, and the nationalised property and shareholdings at the value as determined by the Commission at the date of loss.
It is further proposed that arrears of simple interest at contractual rates should be allowed on the external bonds as from the date of default up to 12th February, 1967. Since other claimants

have been deprived of their property or capital and have also lost opportunities of earning, the assessment of their claims will be increased by simple interest at 4 per cent. per annum from the date of loss.
The dividend which will be payable on the basis of these assessments to successful claimants will become clear only when every claim has been determined by the distributing authority. There will be a six months' period during which applications must be made, after which the Foreign Compensation Commission will proceed with the distribution as quickly as possible. It is hoped that it will be possible to declare an interim dividend soon after the closing date for applications.
The agreement with the Soviet Union, and the measures to give effect to it which are now submitted to the House, are to be judged by the criterion of what is practicable rather than by ideal standards of justice. The distribution proposals which I have outlined are, however, so devised as to do rough justice as between the various categories of claims, which to a certain extent compete with each other.
I ask the House to approve the Second Reading of this Bill, which provides principally for long overdue compensation for the former owners of property in the Baltic States and ceded territories, and will thereby remove a tiresome obstacle from the path of our relations with the Soviet Union.

4.38 p.m.

Mr. Richard Wood: This is a difficult Bill; to me at least, if not to all hon. Members. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will correct me if he finds me erring in my interpretation of it.
The hon. Gentleman has explained that it is an enabling Bill to implement the agreement between this country and the Soviet Union. I understand the assets in this country of the nationals of the States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as parts of other countries which were ceded to the Soviet Union, were frozen when Germany invaded those countries in the war. Those assets included gold and other property and there were other assets in those territories frozen by the Soviet Union which belonged to British nationals. I also believe the Soviet Union


had paid no compensation for certain concerns it had nationalised.
That, I understand, was the position in the years which followed the last war, and the following situation existed: the Soviet Union had claims on Britain; Britain had claims on the Soviet Union; and there were individuals both in Russia and in Britain who also had claims to be met.
Therefore, I go along, and I think that a number of my hon. Friends would go along, with the hon. Gentleman in so far as he suggests that the need was made out, in principle, after a very long period, for some agreement between Britain and the Soviet Union, which would enable these claims to be settled.
The hon. Gentleman has already explained that the negotiations between the two countries continued for a number of years. I understand that it was the wish of the Foreign Office that both sides should abandon their claims to the other's property, but after Mr. Kosygin visited London at the beginning of last year we had the announcement from the Prime Minister of what he described as
the final settlement of mutual financial and property claims and counter claims.
This Agreement, as the hon. Gentleman explained, has involved the dropping of all claims on both sides and our payment to the Russians of £500,000, which would be used by them for the purchase of British goods.
That is one of the first subjects on which I will ask the hon. Gentleman a question in a moment. Meanwhile, Britain would discharge the obligations to claimants in Britain from assets which had been frozen. It was nearly a year before the Agreement was actually signed, and hon. Members can be forgiven if they decide that, even by contemporary parliamentary standards, and even after the painstaking explanation of the hon. Gentleman, this Bill is very hard to understand.
I begin by asking the hon. Gentleman questions about the Article in the Agreement involving the payment to Soviet Russia of £500,000. As far as I know no justification has been offered in principle for this ex-gratia payment, other than that it was the price the Government felt they must pay if agreement were to be reached What is now the

exact position with regard to it? Is it already available to the Soviet Government?
If so, what was the reason for the somewhat clandestine method of obtaining parliamentary approval by concealing, or at least effectively camouflaging, this payment among a great many other items in the Estimates? Similarly, what authority had the Government to sell the gold in June, 1967? At that time no agreement had been signed and the legal right of the Government to take the action they did seems, to put it very gently indeed, deeply obscure.
When the Bill becomes law, claims will be assessed and money paid to the British claimants, with the exception of the shareholders in the two companies which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, where foreign nationals will also be paid.
I understand that this exception was agreed with the Russians on the strength of the Russians' claim that they had already paid out some foreign nationals.
Several of my hon. Friends, who have made a careful study of this very complicated matter, feel deeply disturbed by the action of Her Majesty's Government in using, for the purpose of settling these claims, money belonging to the Baltic States, whose permission to use it has never been, and cannot be at present, forthcoming.
We have never, and the hon. Gentleman has confirmed this, accorded de jure recognition to the claim of the Soviet Union to sovereignty over the Baltic States, but I find it difficult to read Article 2 of this Agreement without getting the impression that Her Majesty's Government, in that Article, appear to give such de jure recognition in accepting that the Soviet Union is able to give an undertaking not to support claims made by the Baltic States.
In this connection, it seems worth remembering that the Soviet Government was recognised de facto by Great Britain in 1921, but it was not until de jure recognition was granted in 1924 that the Soviet Government were able to claim, successfully, the archives and property which had belonged to their predecessors.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned that on several occasions my hon. Friends and I had expressed disquiet, and, in


particular, had asked that the claim of the Baltic States to the assets which they formerly owned should be admitted in the event of their regaining their sovereignty. This undertaking the Government have so far been unwilling to give, and the hon. Gentleman seemed unwilling to give it this afternoon. I will return to that later. One of the obvious difficulties in this matter is the inevitable change in the relationship between Great Britain and the Soviet Union, caused by events in Czechoslovakia less than three months ago. In February, 1967, we had the Prime Minister speaking of "a future of greater co-operation and friendship". Now, in November, 1968, those words seem a little hollow.
We have, in the intervening period, had a lapse of more than 18 months, and most of a year since the Agreement was signed last January. I do not know what the reason was for this long delay—whether it is due to any cause other than the almost chronic overloading of the Government's legislative programme. Whatever the cause, the result is that we have to consider this Bill in an atmosphere quite different from that in which the Agreement was reached and signed.
Last week, the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary spoke of "the alarming element of unpredictability" which the events of last August had introduced into international affairs. A bargain that was reached 21 months ago as part of a general attempt to improve relations between East and West must inevitably appear very different today when one of the parties to the Agreement has severely shaken the basis of any confidence by its action in Central Europe this summer.
Last week, in our foreign affairs debate, it was quite clear that our desire remains to work for the removal of outstanding differences between Russia and Britain, but the Agreement we are discussing has, through the lapse of time, become as dust in the balance compared with the affront to liberty in Central Europe recently perpetrated by the Soviet Union.
Moreover, the effect of the Agreement in relation to the question of the recognition, de jure, of Russian sovereignty

over the Baltic States must cause us, in present circumstances, even deeper concern. In February of this year, in answer to a question the then Under Secretary of State made clear that Her Majesty's Government did not recognise de jure the de facto absorption of these States into the Soviet Union. That is what the hon. Gentleman has confirmed this afternoon. It is very hard to see how Great Britain can recognise the power of the Soviet Union to speak for the Baltic States while refusing formally to accept her capacity for doing so. On this same occasion, last February, and on several others, questions have been asked about the intentions of the Government in the event of the three States regaining their sovereignty.
The hon. Gentleman dealt shortly with this matter, and called it a new situation which would arise. I want him to understand very clearly that a great many consciences in this House would be under serious strain if Great Britain, having willingly acted as banker for independent nations, having sold their gold and other assets and used the proceeds to meet the claims, not only of our own people but of others, were not then prepared, if the opportunity arose, to make full restitution to the appropriate owners of those assets.
The present unpredictability of Europe, in the Foreign Secretary's phrase, is not after all, all one-way. The Baltic States may have had, for the last quarter of a century, according to the cynicism of Mr. Molotov, to "join the glorious family of the Soviet Union". But few things in this world are immutable. Neither this Government nor anyone else can say with certainty that the most proper of all claims will not one day be made on the assets we are now discussing. My hon. Friends and I must, therefore, again press the Government, and we will continue to press them, for a clear declaration of intention that if that situation arose those proper claims would be met.
The hon. Gentleman has described the justification for the Bill. As with many other things that we do or say, he says that we have to deal with the world as it is and not with the world as we would have it be. I do not deny the case for an agreement in the circumstances which have arisen over the years and in the situation which now obtains in Eastern


Europe. But this does not in any way discharge us from the responsibility of ensuring that any settlement is as sound and honest as we can possibly make it. If, to put it bluntly, as the hon. Gentleman put it, we are forced to abandon those who have lost their freedom, the very least that we can ask is that we should be prepared to stand by them and returns what is theirs if that freedom were regained.
We do not intend to oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, but our attitude to its later stages must inevitably be determined by the Government's willingness to accept the possible obligations of the future which we do not believe can be honourably refused. If we are asked to pass the Bill in spite of all the anxieties which I have expressed and to which I am sure my hon. Friends will add, I am convinced that we must send a clear message to all those people who find themselves unwillingly under Soviet rule.
Our message must be that, however small our capacity at present to give practical help, we certainly have not forgotten them and we shall never forget them. Such messages do not right wrongs, but at present this seems to me both the most and the least that we can do, and on this occasion we can give practical emphasis to our words by the commitment which I earnestly ask the Government to make.

4.52 p.m.

Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish: I am very strongly opposed to the Bill on three main grounds. I ask the House to be kind enough to bear with me while I make a somewhat longer speech than I make normally. I am not a believer in long speeches generally.
The three grounds on which I oppose the Bill are as follows. First, I believe it to be a clear breach of international law as it is accepted and applied by civilised countries, among which Britain claims, with right, to set a high example. Secondly, I believe it to be contrary to Britain's legal and moral responsibility towards the people of the Baltic States, whether they are in exile, as many of them are, or living at home under Soviet domination. Thirdly, I believe that in its present form the Bill must seriously

damage the trust reposed in Britain by all formerly independent nations now living under foreign subjugation to whom we constantly give assurances of friendship and support. Those are the three grounds on which I say that this is a thoroughly bad Bill.
The Under-Secretary of State, in his speech, which I found totally unconvincing, in another context said that one aspect of the Bill was not based on ideal standards of justice. I thought that that summed up the whole thing admirably. I therefore ask the Government, in the strongest possible terms, to amend this shabby piece of legislation in order to bring it into line with international law and to make it morally defensible in the eyes of the Baltic people. They cannot speak for themselves and, therefore, it is all the more incumbent on us to do so today.
First, how does the Bill offend against international law? By the Anglo-Soviet Agreement of 5th January, 1968, the United Kingdom accepted responsibility for certain Soviet debts. This Bill provides that the United Kingdom shall use the assets of a third party—the Baltic States—for the purpose of partially clearing up these debts. There is no question whatever of the Soviet Union having any title to these Baltic assets, and the Under-Secretary of State made that absolutely clear.
It is consistently upheld in English courts of law that foreign expropriation measures do not affect property located in England. Thus, the decrees of 1940 by which the Soviet Union expropriated the assets of the Baltic States have no validity in respect of assets lodged in this country. Successive British Governments since 1940, the date of the first Soviet occupation of these three countries, have, in any case, flatly refused to accept that the Soviet Union had any title whatever to the Baltic gold assets.
In a letter to me dated 15th June, 1967, the Minister of State, Foreign Office, wrote as follows:
Shortly before the Baltic States were formally incorporated into the Soviet Union, the Soviet State Bank represented that it had purchased the gold from the Baltic Central Banks. This claim is not one which we have recognised, and the transfer of gold was withheld.


That is clear enough. Then there was the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States in 1940, and the nationalisation decrees issued by the Soviet Government had, and still have, no bearing on the title to the assets lodged in this country by the Baltic States—that, I think, must be and is agreed—and no more did the Soviet reoccupation of the Baltic States in 1944, which is I think also agreed. Therefore, the Soviet Union has no title to the Baltic gold assets lodged here in 1919. Is, then, this gold the rightful property of the Baltic States, which are at present disabled, or of the British Government? We should have the answer to this key question.
In 1940, when Nazi Germany overran the Baltic States, the assets of the Baltic States in Britain were lodged with the Custodian of Enemy Property. The Under-Secretary of State said, quite rightly, that this was to safeguard British interests, and that is exactly why this action was taken. This was a technical step. There was not the slightest inference that the Baltic countries were "enemy States" in any sense of the word; they were not at any time during the war. There was no change of relations between Britain and the Baltic States, with which we have always been on the friendliest terms since they became independent. They had declared their neutrality at the outbreak of war. What else could they do? Our enemy was not Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, but Nazi Germany.
Similarly, when Finland became, willy-nilly, enemy territory, its assets in this country were lodged with the Custodian of Enemy Property. Section 7 of the Trading with the Enemy Act lays down that vesting orders are carried out
with a view to preventing the payment of money to enemies and preserving enemy property in contemplation of arrangements to be made at the conclusion of peace".
At the end of the war, Finnish property in Britain was, rightly and quickly, restored to Finland to whose Government Britain gave de jure recognition. On the other hand, the Baltic States were not, and still are not, in a position to exercise their title to their property. That is the sad thing which we must recognise. Therefore, Britain, through the Bank of England, remains trustee of Baltic property in this country. I believe that that is undeniable in law, but

I should like the Under-Secretary of State to comment on that.
I should now like to say a few words about recognition. Britain has rightly refused to give de jure recognition to the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States. This has been confirmed over and over again. I had a letter from the Foreign Office in June of last year confirming it, in which it was said:
…nothing in the joint statement issued on Mr. Kosygin's departure from London on 13th February in any way affects the Government's policy of continuing to withhold de jure recognition of the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union".
The Under-Secretary of State said today, and I am glad that he did, that that remains our position. Therefore, there is no doubt about that.
What are the legal consequences of giving de facto but withholding de jure recognition in the case of Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic States? I am not a lawyer, far from it. I see a famous international lawyer close to me, and I am nervous about making this speech, but if I make any gaffes no doubt my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northwich (Sir J. Foster) will draw attention to them.
I understand that withholding de jure recognition to the Soviet Baltic republics has two important consequences in international law. First, the predecessor of the de facto Government retains its legal rights. In other words, the status of the Baltic banks, and the former independent Baltic Governments, is unchanged until such time as de jure recognition is given to their legally constituted successors. I think that that is a correct statement. Secondly, any treaties concluded with the former Baltic Governments, which we recognised de jure, remain valid. I understand that that, too, is a correct statement. If those statements are correct, it follows that the commercial treaties or agreements made between Britain and each of the Baltic States in their years of independence following the first Great War are still in force. I shall be grateful if the Under-Secretary will comment on that, too. Are they still in force?
Let me give one example from the Anglo-Latvian Treaty of Commerce of 1923. This stipulates that the
subjects…of each of the Contracting Parties in the territory of the other shall be


at full liberty to…possess every description of property…
That is Article 3, and there were similar, though not identical, treaties with Estonia and Lithuania. It must be clear that the banks of the Baltic States remain the legal owners of the gold deposited with the Bank of England. If I am wrong, I hope that the Under-Secretary will say so. This is a frightfully complicated question. I have done my utmost to consult the most expert opinion, but I may be wrong, and if I am I hope that the Minister will say so.
I am trying to keep emotion out of our discussion, but I think I must say something which hon. Members may not know, that some of the gold deposited here was in the form of heirlooms and wedding rings willingly given by Baltic citizens to support their countries' economies in the difficult early years of independence. This is an emotional point, but it is none the less something to bear in mind when considering who is the rightful owner of the gold.
What is the position of the Bank of England in all this? The Bank accepted these gold deposits "for physical safe custody". The position was explained to me in a letter dated 24th November, 1967 from the Governor of the Bank of England. Sir Leslie O'Brien wrote:
…each individual bar remained the property of the customer concerned until it was vested in the Custodian of Enemy Property in accordance with the relevant U.K. legislation…the gold was placed with us for safe custody in much the same way as a private individual might place jewellery or other valuables with his bank.
Responsibility for the gold was technically taken away from the Bank of England during the Nazi occupation of the Baltic States to ensure that it was not put to purposes helpful to the enemy—that was the only reason why the action was taken—but in present circumstances the Bank of England can hardly shrug off its moral responsibility for the safe keeping of the gold.
Nor does the Bank's duty to its customers end because the customers are at present disabled. Would the Bank of England have washed its hands of its undoubted responsibility if any of its customers had been in a position to challenge this act in the courts? I very much doubt it. It is unfortunately true that no challenge has been made, and it may

even be true that no challenge can be made. I shall not comment on that, but the likelihood of one is very remote.
It is possible—this has neither been confirmed nor denied—that the contracts between the Bank of England and the Baltic banks include a provision whereby if the Baltic banks were unable to claim legal title to their gold for a period of 50 years it should become the property of the Bank of England. I am told that such a provision is not unusual. Presumably no such provision applied to the assets of the former Czarist régime in Russia, known as Baring balances, and some in the Midland bank, which are apparently still held sterile and not applied for any legitimate purposes, though why I do not know. Certainly there cannot have been a 50-year clause in respect of them, otherwise something would have been done with these substantial balances. But if the 50-year clause applied to the Baltic gold, the time when such a provision would come into force would not be before 1990, so that ought to be borne in mind in considering the Bill.
What representations have been made to the Government by the Bank of England about the conversion of this gold? Have any representations been received, and does the Bank regard itself as having any continuing responsibility? Did the Bank raise strong objections when the gold was sold? It was sold in a surreptitious way—my right hon. Friend referred to this—and sneaked into an enormous vote for tens of millions of £s, and was not spotted by more than one very observant Member. I am sure that at the time the House had no idea to what this £500,000 related. How will the Bank answer any rightful claim for each individual bar of gold to which the Governor referred, and which was entrusted to him?
I want to consider, next, the argument that the proposal to convert these assets for certain specified purposes does not infringe the Baltic title to them. I do not think that this argument will hold water. To take property belonging to another, to sell it, and to spend the proceeds, amounts simply to theft. The fact that in this case the proceeds of robbery are to be applied to pay the debts of the enemies and oppressors of the owners of the property seems to add gratuitous insult to injury.
In particular, the gift of £500,000 out of these Baltic assets to the Soviet Union to which my right hon. Friend referred must be quite disgraceful, and quite unnecessary. I have had many letters from all over the world about this since I wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph on the subject. It must appear to the Baltic people as a calculated affront. It cannot be reconciled with our firm and just refusal to recognise de jure the Soviet annexation of these three charming countries. We cannot have it both ways. Britain cannot pretend to set an example among civilised countries as the upholder of the highest standards of justice, and at the same time use this shabby Measure to legalise a wrongful act.
It is only a few weeks since the people of Britain, individually and through their political leaders, expressed disgust and indignation at the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. This Bill must raise the question whether they were genuine tears, or only crocodile tears, which Members of the Front Bench opposite shed during the debate on 26th August. For instance, the Foreign Secretary then said:
…we should avoid contacts which have clear political overtones and are of such a nature that the very fact that one has such a contact could be quoted as evidence that Britain really did not mind what happened…It would be totally wrong for the Red Army Choir to come to this country and this has been made clear to the impressario concerned. "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th August, 1968; Vol. 769, c. 1418.]
To show the Soviet Government that we disapprove of their invasion of Czechoslovakia, we change our minds about the Red Army Choir singing at the Albert Hall. How do we show the Soviet Government that we cannot recognise as lawful their annexation of the Baltic States? By giving the £500,000 of Baltic money, to which we admit they have no legal title, and by using what is left to settle Soviet debts. I think that this is awful.
The Foreign Secretary also reminded us during the debate on the Queen's Speech on 31st October, that this is Human Rights Year. He said:
One of the chances of getting a more peaceful world is bound up with trying to get more general respect for human rights. This is not something that the United Nations can impose, but it is something in which Britain can help by her example."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st October, 1968; Vol. 772. c. 198.]

Exactly one week later Britain is setting an example in respect for human rights by the fraudulent—there is no other word for it—conversion of property belonging to a helpless nation.
I turn lastly to the question of the legitimate demands of British citizens who have waited for so long for compensation for their assets seized by the Soviet Union. These investments were in some cases speculative, and in other cases they were not. Speculation may bring high rewards or heavy losses—sometimes total losses. In particular, war often results in financial casualties. But the argument of our present Socialist Government that because British subjects suffered heavy losses it is "just" to use Baltic assets to help them, and that Baltic gold, if blocked indefinitely, is "doing no good to anyone"—quoting from the Foreign Office letter to me—is quite insupportable.
Banks in this country, and no doubt all over the world, are holding blocked assets that are "doing no good to anyone". Where such assets can legitimately be freed and applied to just purposes, I am in favour of this being done, but this question seems to be a matter of law, which is not all that complicated. The fact that assets which are held on deposit are "doing no good to anyone" does not legalise their misappropriation.
Britain has been in a strong bargaining position on this question, vis-à-vis the Soviet union. First, Soviet debts to British claimants were admitted to be "considerably higher" than British debts to Soviet claimants. Furthermore, the Soviet ownership of Baltic assets overseas is not recognised by the British, the United States or other foreign Governments in which the independent Baltic States placed their trust. The British Government, having failed miserably to take advantage of the strong bargaining position in which they found themselves, are faced with two alternatives—either to hold the British taxpayer responsible for compensating British citizens for claims which the Soviet Government acknowledge but refuse to meet, or to tell British claimants that through a failure in negotiations their claims, however just, will not be met, and that nothing can be done to offset their losses.
The Government have done neither of these things. Instead, they have filched money which morally—in spite of what


the Under-Secretary said—and legally—which I think I have proved in my speech—by all accepted standards of international law belongs to a third party, in order to satisfy, in part, British claimants who have had to wait so long for compensation. There is only one course of action that can give this squalid and unnecessary little Bill a thin veneer of respectability, and that is to adopt the course suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) and to add a restitution Clause, or to give a clear and unequivocal promise of restitution. This would amount to saying that, come the happy day when any one of these countries regains its independence—and while it will not come tomorrow it may well come some day—without question asked the Government concerned will have an absolute right to restitution of its own property placed here with the Bank of England.
The law on this point, and Britain's adherence to it, is absolutely clear. I quote now a legal opinion by Lord McNair who said that
…property belonging to foreign nationals can only be expropriated with compensation; it cannot be confiscated. Moreover, such compensation must be ' adequate, efficient and immediate compensation'".
According to a legal opinion, the International Bar Association confirmed, in 1958, the principle
that the expropriation of foreign private property could take place only on the basis of the public good and against adequate compensation.
The United Kingdom confirmed this principle at the 1946 Peace Conference, when the British delegation referred to
the United Kingdom's own principle of full compensation, to which she still aheres and to which she attaches the greatest importance.
These three quotations show without a shadow of doubt that the legal title to this money remains with the Baltic countries and that they are entitled to full restitution if any one of them regains its independence. That is absolutely undeniable, and I urge the Government with all the force at my command to give such an assurence, either by amending the Bill—which may not be possible—or by a firm and unequivocal statement from the Dispatch Box.
This is a small and somewhat obscure Bill. Why it is called the Foreign Compensation

Bill I have no idea. Mostly British subjects will benefit from the payout. Although there are probably some Hottentots and Eskimos who are shareholders in the gold, the great majority are not foreigners. The Bill is not easy to understand. It does not touch the lives of many citizens of this or any other country. It will not hit the headlines in this country or abroad, or make any dramatic difference to our relationships with the great world Powers. But it will certainly make our friends ashamed of us. The Baltic peoples, whether at home or in exile, will rightly feel that they have been betrayed. Only the Soviet leaders will rejoice, with Mr. Kosygin and Mr. Brezhnev sipping their double Scotches in the Kremlin and drinking a toast to "absent friends" as they pocket their £500,000 tip.
The pilfering of the Baltic assets cannot be compared to the Great Train Robery. It is more like a petty theft from a sub-post office. But if this House accepts this Bill in its present form, without a firm promise of full restitution, it will cost this country loss of respect out of all proportion to the number of people or the sum of money involved. Of that I am sure. We do not deserve and cannot expect to be trusted if we behave in this way towards people whom we call our friends, and who cannot stand up for their own rights.
In the context of the Bill we would do well to remember a simple Estonian proverb—
Fortune gone—little lost,
Strength gone—much lost,
Honour gone—all lost.

5.20 p.m.

Mr. John Smith: The Russian and British peoples have in the past had strong affinities with each other, and I am wholly in favour of all contacts and trade between this country and Russia—indeed in matters of commerce the Russians are most punctilious—and I look forward to the day when both countries can freely share, in all fields, whatever each has to offer the other. We must not be deflected from this aim by recent dreadful events and setbacks. I shall be sorry therefore if this debate delays the arrival of that day, and, consequently, what I have to say is critical solely of our Government.
I would not presume to speak on the moral or legal aspects, but I have worked in a bank for 20 years and will therefore deal with the practical aspects of this matter. The Minister claimed that he is doing "what is practical". That is a poor thing to claim in such a matter as this, and an amazing thing for this Government to claim in any matter at all. But is what he is doing practical?
First, although our claims are "considerably greater", to use the Government's words, than the claims made on us, we are nevertheless giving away £500,000. The Russians will, quite rightly, not respect us for this. Danegeld has never worked; and to tie this to a purchase of British consumer goods in addition makes it a thoroughly second-rate transaction. Indeed, it is the sort of transaction which, in the not too recent past, we pitied other countries for having to make.
Second, this gold was deposited with us for safe keeping. It is a pity that it was not deposited in the form of currency, in which case during all these years it would have been working for its owners and for us. Nevertheless, it was deposited with us for safe keeping, and no commercial bank that wished to retain its customers would dream of parting company with objects so deposited without the clearest legal permission to do so The bank in which I work has rooms full of objects, many of them extremely interesting and many of them to which the title is almost perfect, but not quite. We would not dream of parting with any of them without a perfect title being shown to us. Why is that? It is because we wish to stay in business as bankers; and what applies to us in commerce applies, a fortiori, to this country.
These Baltic States are not the only people who have-placed assets in our hands for safe custody, nor are they the only small countries which may find them selves in danger. Are we to suppose that this Bill will encourage, for example, some Arab States, which keep a great deal of money with us, to leave their assets in our hands?
Furthermore, what is to be the position of the Baltic gold deposited by the Bank for International Settlements? Is that to be sequestrated and sold? Of course it is not. If it is not, why are we doing something with Baltic gold deposited by

the countries themselves which we are not doing with gold deposited by an international organisation? The answer is all too clear.
Again, the Bill is retrospective. The Agreement has been implemented, the gold has been sold, and the money has gone without the approval of Parliament. I understood my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) to say that he had had some form of undertaking that Parliament's approval of the Agreement would first be sought.
Finally, should there ever again be Baltic States, I hope—and the Minister dismissed this as a hypothetical matter but it is a hypothetical matter of some importance—that provision will be made for reconstituting these assets—and, of course, the obligations—so that this dishonourable and inexpedient transaction can, as I earnestly hope it will, at some future date be put right.

5.25 p.m.

Sir John Foster: I have an interest to disclose in that a company with which I am associated holds some promissory notes.
I want, first, to deal with the matter on the footing that the gold was to be sold, or is to be sold, and that the proceeds are to be distributed to the claimants in the categories to which the Government propose. It seems most extraordinary that when the gold is in the possession of Her Majesty's Government and when the claimants are all on this side of the Soviet line, the Government should give £500,000 to those who stole the Baltic States. There is no need for it.
The Under-Secretary of State said that we must not do a thing unilaterally. The word "unilateral" means one-sided and presupposes that two sides have an interest. The criminal does not have an interest. There are not two sides here but only one side. The hon. Gentleman said that there might be repercussions, though he did not care to specify what they might be. There cannot be any repercussions. We have the gold and we have the claimants. This £500,000 transaction was quite unnecessary.
"But", says the Under-Secretary—and this is a typical Parliamentary tu quoque argument—"Conservative Governments since 1940 have not bothered to do anything about it." He therefore seems to


be arguing, "The Tory Governments were right, and we are right to follow them." I meet that argument head on by saying that the Conservative Governments were wrong. They should have distributed this money to the claimants in this country. The hon. Gentleman says that this action has been taken for good international order, but it is not good international order to come to an agreement with someone who has stolen something. The gold produced the assets, and the assets should have been distributed.
Another way of dealing with such matters is to do nothing, and that is what the former régime did with regard to the Czarist assets. The position was exactly the same as it is with regard to the Baltic State assets. The Czarist assets in this country were very considerable, and so were the number of claimants. Many of them were poor. Most of them have died since 1917, when the assets were taken, and it is very much to the dishonour of all this country's Governments since 1917 that they have not collected the Czarist assets and distributed them to the claimants. No other country has been foolish enough to say, "We will not touch the Czarist assets in our country and distribute them to the claimants." Many of the claimants in this country were destitute and in urgent need of the few pounds they would have got from those assets.
I was in the habit of writing every five years, whatever Government were in power, asking, "Why do you not appoint someone to collect the Czarist assets in this country and distribute them to the Czarist claimants?" The last answer I had—from my own Government, I am sorry to say—was that it would annoy the Russians. But the Russians have no right to those assets and will not have any right to claim. These assets have been here since 1917, and I urge the Government, if they consider distributing the assets in that case, not to seek agreement with the Russian Government, who are not concerned with the assets, before distributing them—

Mr. Ted Leadbitter: Am I correct in suggesting to the hon. and learned Member that the balances arising out of the conditions in Article 2 of Command 3517—namely, £500,000—

are to be deposited in the name of the Soviet Union? Does he agree that that was public knowledge in January of this year; and that he has, therefore, taken a very long time to show his complete disagreement, as did his hon. Friends? Is not this a belated argument?

Sir J. Foster: This is, again, a typical Parliamentary argument. All right, I am late—but I am still right. The hon. Gentleman uses just the sort of argument we get in this House, but it is a complete non sequitur. It is not logical. All right, I should have complained earlier—so what? That does not alter the fact that it is completely crazy of the Prime Minister, who has all the assets, to say to the Russians, "I will give you £500,000 in order to get an agreement." That is unnecessary. That does not seem to be progressive, or gritty, or whatever may be the word that is used.

Mr. Leadbitter: What I am trying to convey to the hon. and learned Gentleman is that this agreement was reached in January, signed, and made known to this House and to the public. All I am saying is that if the hon. and learned Gentleman and his hon. Friends were so really upset they could have tabled a Motion or had a debate long before now.

Sir J. Foster: I agree that I could have done so. But that still does not make me wrong. The hon. Gentleman must make intellectual arguments intellectually, not by tu quoque arguments, saying, "You are late". What does that mean? That I cannot speak, that I should not speak? The hon. Gentleman raises his hand in a gesture. Let him deal with the question why somebody who has assets belonging to a country which was overrun and illegally annexed by another should give a tip of £500,000 in order to get an agreement which is not worth anything. What is the point?
I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) that the Government should say that if the Baltic States ever regain their independence we will pay them the money. But I do not approach the matter in quite the same way. I think that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith) overlook the effect of the "line of war." English law is very harsh in its application of the line of war. If one


had a contract with, say, a Frenchman or a Dutchman, who was anti-Nazi, when war came the contract was abrogated and if he had property in this country it was seized by the Custodian of Enemy Property, and presumably sold by him.
Thus, the Government can look on the gold of the Baltic States as undoubtedly belonging to those States and can regard the debt owed by the citizens of the Baltic as being attributable to the State. It is a case of one against the other. and therefore I agree that the assets of the Baltic States could have been distributed to the claimants.
But there is the moral point that the gold was deposited here for safe keeping and it was not the fault of the Baltic States: hat they were overrun. The Government should add to the Bill a rider that they will restore the amount of the gold if: he Baltic States become independent again. The States could regard it in a way as an aid to their independence. We would be called on to help them financially, and it would be helpful to them to know that on becoming independent they would automatically get the £5½ million or £6 million-worth of gold.
But I do not think that some of my hon. Friend's strictures that the gold has been filched from the Baltic States are altogether justified, if one regards the gold as belonging to the Baltic States and the claims against individual citizens as being transferred to claims against the Baltic States themselves.
However, I come to the same conclusion as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewes, and I ask the Minister to examine the case of the Czarist assets and not use the tu quoque argument that any number of Governments since 1917 should have dealt with the matter. I pressed them to do so, and it is disgraceful that they did not. That is no excuse for the present Government not doing it. It does not follow that because the other Governments did not do it the present Government are acting correctly.
In this case they have been very foolish as well. They have given away £500,000 unnecessarily. I am certain that any Government formed by my party which at last got round to distributing the proceeds of the Baltic gold to the claimants in this country would not have given the Russians a £500,000 tip.

5.34 p.m.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: I, too, am worried about the Baltic gold part of the Agreement and Bill. But in principle I favour attempts to settle outstanding claims across frontiers, particularly when they have been outstanding for many years, because otherwise individuals can suffer through being deprived of the use and benefit of their property for most of their lifetime.
I also agree that an element of barter must often enter into negotiations and agreements with Communist States or Governments which control everything within their States. But the British Government can only carry out such negotiations correctly if they clearly represent the owners and claimants, and act on their behalf. In the present case there is clearly doubt as to whether the ownership of the gold which was deposited in the Bank of England before 1939 by the central banks of the Baltic States has been properly determined. It is in doubt. The three countries were annexed by the Soviet Union, and although the United Kingdom recognised that annexation de facto, the Minister has confirmed today that there is no question of our recognising it de jure.
The banks were nationalised by the Soviet Union and the property expropriated by it, but the British courts have always held that such expropriation does not apply to property within this country. I understand that the United Kingdom has never recognised the Soviet Union's claim to ownership of the gold in the Bank of England, unless they have done so by virtue of the Agreement reached at the beginning of this year.
I understand the desire to try to clear up the matter. It is exactly 20 years ago that I was engaged in the Foreign Office in the negotiations with Yugoslavia on the three Agreements which were reached in December, 1948, and which are referred to indirectly in the Bill. Those were Agreements on trade compensation payments, money and property. The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) will remember this, because he was the Minister responsible at the time. The British Government were then clearly representing British claimants, and there was no doubt that they were acting on behalf of


persons in this country and in the Commonwealth whom they could represent.

Sir J. Foster: My hon. Friend would probably agree that the situation then was very different, because the Yugoslav Government had to pay money to us. He has not dealt with the question, "Why have an agreement with somebody when you do not have to pay anything?".

Mr. Campbell: Yes. My hon. and learned Friend intervened before I had completed making my point. I mentioned those Agreements to explain to the Government that I am sympathetic, having been involved in such negotiations in the past. But in that case the British Government clearly represented claimants and owners of property, and the Yugoslavs agreed to the payment of a sum as compensation. The Agreements, signed in December, 1948, led, with others, to the establishment in 1950 of the Foreign Compensation Commission referred to in Clause 2(4), which then had the job of dealing with the claims of mainly British and Commonwealth citizens, and then dividing up the money which the Yugoslav and Czech Governments had agreed to pay in compensation. That is why I recognise that this form of settlement is something for which one tries to aim.
But in the present case there is doubt as to whether the Government are within their rights to dispose of gold as if it belonged to the Soviet Union. That is exactly the point which I think my hon. and learned Friend said made the difference. I will not argue with him on points of law, on which he is an expert. He feels that in times of war English law is harsh, and he would have been prepared to dispose of the Baltic gold at a much earlier date. But he made it clear that if any Government did that, even in 1947 or 1948, they should give a clear assurance that if there were a valid claim in future from the owners of the Baltic gold they would be paid the money they were due. That is how I understand it. My hon. and learned Friend has a difference of opinion with some hon. Members on this side of the House about the timing when it would have been possible to dispose of the gold. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for the Cities of London and

Westminster (Mr. John Smith), as a banker, said that he believed that it would have been wrong for the Bank of England, as a trustee, to have disposed of the gold.
The Government, having reached the decision, presumably in the light of events in Eastern Europe over the past 20 years, that it is proper for the Bank of England to dispose of this gold which it has been holding as a trustee, I entirely agree with my hon. and learned Friend that it is unnecessary at that stage to bring in the Soviet Union. The gold could have been disposed of as assets to be divided up by the Foreign Compensation Commission among the claimants. It is entirely unnecessary to have an agreement to pay £500,000 and to bring in other provisions for a consumer goods deal. The Under-Secretary of State mentioned some counter-claims by the Soviet Union against British citizens which would be waived, but although I do not know the details, I do not believe that these claims could be enough to cause a need for a deal with the Soviet Union at this time.
I presume that the Government have decided that claims by the original owners of the gold are unlikely to materialise. Presumably they do not believe that, in the foreseeable future, the central banks of the three independent Baltic States, who are the owners of the gold, will appear as valid claimants. The Under-Secretary of State spoke of that as hypothetical. Nonetheless, the Government surely ought to make a categorical statement that the legal interest of the owners of the gold is, and will be, protected. The Government should give an assurance, whether it is written into the Bill or not, that if a claimant were to appear in the future with a valid claim, Britain would pay the equivalent value of the gold which had been held on behalf of that owner.
If the Government argue—as the hon. Member has, I think, argued—that they consider such a claim now to be improbable, there is no difficulty in their giving a solemn undertaking of that kind. Although such a claim might be made years ahead, in the Government's view it is improbable. I cannot see why such an undertaking should not be given.
Several hon. and right hon. Members from this side of the House, including my


right hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), have corresponded with the Government on this subject and have put down Questions about it. That is because, while we should welcome an honest settlement of the outstanding matters and the outstanding claims, we are very much concerned that Britain's good name and reputation should be upheld in dealings involving gold of which the Bank of England has been a trustee and in respect of which it has had only limited powers of disposal.

5.45 p.m.

Mr. Whitlock: The right hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) said that the Bill was in many ways difficult to understand. Unlike the hon. and learned Member for Northwich (Sir J. Foster), I am not a distinguished lawyer, and I sometimes find it difficult to understand the esoteric legal arguments which the hon. and learned Gentleman uses in the Chamber. Obviously, many points of international law are involved in the Bill.
The right hon. Member for Bridlington said that Article 2 of the Agreement suggests that we are giving de jure recognition to the occupation by the U.S.S.R. of the Baltic States. That is not so. If the right hon. Gentleman will look at Article 2, he will see that the Soviet Government merely undertook not to pursue its claims further. As I said earlier, we have never accepted the Soviet claims in law. In the circumstances, no implication of de jure recognition can flow from the Agreement.
The right hon. Member asked how we can say that we do not recognise de jure Russian sovereignty and nevertheless dispose of the gold. I ask him why he did not put that question to the Government of which he was a member when the decision was taken in 1959 that the Baltic gold would be part of the assets which would be the basis of a settlement. If the present Administration had followed the logic of those who argue that the Baltic assets should remain inviolable, there could not have been negotiations with the Soviet Union and there could have been no settlement. These assets, together with the assets of the ceded territories, constitute the only source of compensation available to post-1939 claimants against the Soviet Union.
In 1940 it was made clear by Britain that at the time of the blocking of the Baltic assets the action had been taken to protect United Kingdom interests and that we fully reserved all the rights to the assets within our jurisdiction. It is an illusion to think that any agreement about the claims which we are discussing could have been reached with the Soviet Government had Her Majesty's Government not agreed that those assets should be taken into account in assessing the compensation due. There could have been no agreement unless we had accepted that.
The hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) asked why, on 23rd January, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said that the Agreement would be subject, in due course, to Parliamentary approval. When my right hon. Friend spoke on the subject, the Agreement had already been signed—on 5th January—and it was laid before the House on 18th January. As the Preamble shows, the Bill is called for in order to make arrangements in consequence of the Agreement. That is, no doubt, why my right hon. Friend made that reference when he answered the hon. and gallant Member's Question.
The hon. and gallant Member argued at some length that, in taking over the Baltic assets for the benefit of British claimants, Her Majesty's Government would be committing a breach of faith towards the Baltic people, and he called on the Government at least to say that the assets or their value would be restored to the Baltic States in the event of their regaining independent sovereignty. I have great sympathy with the feelings which underlie that argument, but the Government have had to have regard to the realities of the situation, and I suggest to the House that hon. Members, too, should have regard to those realities.
The history of the assets is long and complicated, and I will summarise it as briefly as I can. In the summer of 1940, certain actions injurious to British interests were taken by the Governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were then under Soviet control but not yet incorporated, according to Soviet legislation, into the Soviet Union.

Sir T. Beamish: They were not free agents.

Mr. Whitlock: They were not completely free agents, but they were not at that time incorporated into the Soviet Union. Confiscatory decrees were promulgated in these States. The three British Missions protested to the Governments and reserved the rights of Her Majesty's Government to take any action open to them to protect United Kingdom interests.
On 24th July, 1940, the Treasury issued a directive which had the effect of blocking the Baltic States' assets in the United Kingdom, including the gold deposited in the Bank of England by the Baltic central banks. Similar action was taken by certain other Governments. We made it clear to the Governments of the Baltic States and, later, to the Soviet Union, which claimed to have bought the gold in mid-July, that the action was taken to protect United Kingdom interests and that we would reserve all our rights with respect to the assets within our jurisdiction.
In 1941, the Baltic States were occupied by the Germans and their assets in this country became subject to the Trading with the Enemy legislation. With most other occupied countries whose assets in the United Kingdom had been subject to the control of the Crown, we made agreements at the end of the war. These "money and property agreements" as they were called, were reciprocal, since the same conditions of war which made the assets of the occupied territories enemy property in the United Kingdom made the British assets in those territories subject to seizure.
It was, however, impossible to conclude such an agreement with the three Baltic States, since they had possessed no independent Governments since 1940. When the Conservative Government decided in 1959 to enter into negotiations with the Soviet Union on the claims and counter-claims which were outstanding between us, it can only have been on the assumption that the assets within the United Kingdom jurisdiction should form part of any settlement. These assets were the subject of claims by the Soviet Union against us. They were just as much a part of the matter under negotiation as were our claims against the Soviet Union.
As I have said, it is an illusion to think that any agreement on the claims

we are discussing could have been reached unless Her Majesty's Government had agreed that these assets should be taken into account in assessing the compensation due to us. Neither this nor any other British Government could have handed the assets over to the Soviet Union. I am sure that both sides of the House would have rejected such a solution as completely intolerable.
We agreed to these assets being included in the reckoning, with the result which the House knows. To leave the assets alone would do no good, and I cannot believe that it is seriously suggested that this course should be adopted. We have a duty to British claimants and can exercise it by distributing these assets. We have a perfect right to do so under the agreement reached with the Government who exercise de facto authority over the territories concerned.
A somewhat more moderate argument was put by the right hon. Member for Bridlington and others, who accepted that the assets should be distributed but suggested that the Government should undertake to pay back a sum of equal value to the Baltic States in the event of the letter regaining independence. It would not be right for the Government to enter into pledges about a hypothetical situation of this kind which would purport to be binding on future Governments. We do not know in what circumstances any of the Baltic States might gain independence.
If an independent Government were restored at some future date in any of those territories, that Government could submit claims against the British Government of the day. But if that Government were in a position to make claims, they would also be in a position to accept obligations, so that we should have to respond by re-stating our claims.

Sir J. Foster: Why was it necessary to get the permission of the Soviet Government, who are only the de facto occupiers of the Baltic States? Why have an agreement at all?

Mr. Whitlock: Because it has been the policy of successive British Governments to do this by way of agreement and not by unilateral action. It would not be right for me to suggest answers for hypothetical situations. It would be wrong of me to offer a pledge about the restoration of the Baltic States' rights, as


has been suggested by the hon. and learned Member.

Mr. Gordon Campbell: This is a complicated matter. If the hon. Gentleman is not prepared to go so far as to give an assurance in the event that the Baltic States regain their independence, can he not give an assurance—perhaps not here and now but later—that, if valid claims were put forward by the owners of this property, their legal rights would be protected?

Mr. Whitlock: As I have said, it is impossible for me to make commitments for future Governments in hypothetical circumstances—circumstances which at the moment we cannot possibly envisage.
The hon. and gallant Member for Lewes asked whether, since the Government only recognise the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union de facto and not de jure there are not de jure Baltic States and Governments still in existence which have a claim to the Baltic States' assets and have a claim to compensation if those assets are taken by the British Government for the present purposes.
The position of successive Governments has been made clear on a number of occasions. Her Majesty's Government take the view that the Baltic States as constituted before 1940 have ceased de facto to have any effective existence. There is no de jure Government of the States recognised by the British Government and accordingly there are no Governments to claim the assets, apart from the Soviet Government, and the Soviet Government are the de facto Government with whom we have concluded an agreement. In any event, we consider that we are entitled to take the assets to meet unsatisfied demands on our side, and therefore no question of paying compensation to the Baltic States arises.
The hon. and learned Member for Northwich was critical of the agreement. He suggested that there was only one side to this situation. There are claimants and assets on either side. There was a point in the negotiations when my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. George Brown) tried to achieve what he called a "nil-nil draw". Even that was unacceptable to the Soviet Union. Then the £500,000 which was made available

to the Soviet Union came into the picture and clinched the deal. Without that £500,000, there would have been no settlement.
The hon. and learned Member went on to talk about the Czarist assets. I should be out of order if I pursued that question far, but he was critical of past Governments for not securing agreement on the Czarist assets. Now that this agreement has been achieved, we have told the Soviet Government that we hope that it may now be possible to initiate discussions with them on the Czarist claims. We are awaiting a response to our approach. Having achieved this agreement, although in a way which the hon. and learned Member and others disapproved of, we now have opened up the possibility of considering the Czarist claims which other Governments in the past have failed to do.
The claims which have given rise to the need for the Bill arose at a dark period in world history and they have remained outstanding for a long time. The question of the claims has been a problem facing successive Governments and a constant irritation in Anglo-Soviet relations which we are working to improve, despite setbacks. Recently, as the hon. Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith) pointed out, we have had further setbacks. But, in spite of those setbacks, we must work to improve relations with the Soviet Union, as much in the interests of those people in the world who have recently found it a much darker place as for ourselves.
It is the earnest hope of the Government that the Agreement of January, this year, will have finally resolved the questions between the two Governments. We are concerned in the Bill with the final stages of the operation, that of providing compensation for the claimants. What we have to do is to divide the proceeds of the Baltic assets among the claimants. As hon. Members will readily appreciate, the task is by no means easy, because the interests of the different claimants to some extent conflict. The Government's guiding principle is to achieve arrangements which will operate equitably as among different categories of claimants. It is my sincere hope that this long and sorry story will end with a distribution which is just and fair under the terms of the Bill.

Mr. Wood: My hon. Friend and I will clearly want to pursue this matter at a later stage and I should like the hon. Gentleman to give a perfectly clear answer to my question. Does he take the view—I do not think that he does, but I should like to be quite clear—that the use of the assets in the way outlined in the Bill precludes the honouring of the possible future claims which my hon. Friends and I have raised this afternoon? I appreciate the limitations by which he is restricted. None of us can be certain about these things, but, in the nature of probabilities, it seems unlikely that Her Majesty's present Government will still be in office when the Baltic States regain their sovereignty. Nevertheless, while I appreciate the difficulty about binding future Governments, can the hon. Gentleman give the undertaking that, if valid claims were put forward in future, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell), the legal rights of the claimants would be protected and, in the view of the Government, the claims could and should and would be met?

Mr. Whitlock: As I have said several times, we cannot commit any future Government in circumstances which at the moment are entirely hypothetical. The right hon. Gentleman talks about legal rights and valid claims, but what those may mean in any future circumstances none of us can tell. I have said that we cannot give the pledge of this or any

future Government that we can foresee circumstances in which it will be possible to reconstitute the Baltic claims. Beyond that I am unwilling to go.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

Orders of the Day — FOREIGN COMPENSATION [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make provision with respect to certain property (including the proceeds thereof and any income or other property accruing therefrom) of persons formerly resident or carrying on business in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or a part of Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland or Rumania which has been ceded to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it is expedient—

(a)to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament to the Foreign Compensation Commission of income which has accrued since 12th February, 1967 from such property and has been paid into the Exchequer; and
(b)to require the custodian of enemy property to pay into the Consolidated Fund the sum of £500,000 out of any such property held by him.—[Mr. Whitlock.]

Orders of the Day — MINES AND QUARRIES (TIPS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

6.5 p.m.

The Minister of Power (Mr. Roy Mason): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
It is just two years since the disaster at Aberfan and 15 months since the Tribunal appointed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales produced its comprehensive report. The Government made it very clear during the debate on that report that a similar disaster must never be repeated, and the Bill is so designed.
I should comment on the irony of my presenting the Bill to the House: of the many Parliamentary Questions on spoil heaps asked in the period 1959–64, I put more than half, mainly on amenity, and I also had an Adjournment debate about despoiling the countryside by tips. Following one of my Questions the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in 1959 circulated local authorities about spoil heaps and suggested how they could be improved, although then referring to minor works and improvements. It therefore gives me great satisfaction to present the Bill.
During the two years that have passed since the disaster, a great deal has been done in advance of legislation, and it might be helpful if I briefly reviewed the progress made in implementing the Tribunal's recommendations. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will have more to say later about the extensive operations undertaken at Aberfan itself and elsewhere in the Principality since the debate a year ago.
First, let me deal with the steps taken within my Department and by my predecessors. On 1st November, last year, two Orders came into force amending the Mines (Notification of Dangerous Occurences) Order, 1959, and the corresponding Order relating to quarries. They require that any movement of material, or any fire, or any other event indicating that a tip or settling pond belonging to a mine is or is likely to become unstable, must be reported to Her Majesty's Inspector of Mines and Quarries for the district. Even that is quite an advance.

Many is the time when we in mining areas have glanced anxiously at smouldering muck stacks near our villages.
The House will be relieved to know that no serious incident involving loss of life or serious injury has been reported since the new requirements came into force. In fact, 56 incidents were reported and, as is customary, fully investigated by Her Majesty's Inspectors. In fact, only 21 needed to be reported under the Orders. I am glad to say that appropriate action has been or is being taken in every case to ensure that the tips concerned will not constitute a hazard.
The second formal step taken was the appointment, as recommended by the Aberfan Tribunal, of a Tip Safety Committee, whose terms of reference and constitution were given to the House on 20th March. This small committee of highly qualified engineers under the chairmanship of Mr. F. R. Bullen has met three times so far and will meet again within the next fortnight. It has visited coal mine and china clay tip complexes. It has got down to work on a number of problems. It is preparing notes to help local authorities to identify instability in tips, which I hope will be a great help to them in carrying out their functions under Part II of the Bill. The Committee is also co-operating with the National Coal Board, whose code of tipping practice will in due course be studied by the Committee. The experience of the Committee will be of great value to the National Coal Board, to Her Majesty's inspectors, and to me. The Committee is taking particular interest in and carrying out the review of the research work done in different fields relevant to tip safety.
For well over one hundred years inspectors of mines and quarries have been dealing with the safety problems in the mining and quarrying industries. Special crash courses have been recently instituted at universities and technical colleges to extend the inspectors' knowledge of soil mechanics. This has improved their ability to deal with questions of tip safety and to carry out inspections of tips in the course of their normal duties. In addition, a new small but highly qualified branch of civil engineers has been formed in the Inspectorate to deal in depth with tips problems requiring a more expert approach.
The Mining Qualifications Board, which I appoint, has been looking into the wider question of training in soil mechanics and related subjects for those engaged in mining and quarrying. The co-operation of universities, technical colleges, the Institution of Mining Engineers and the Institute of Quarrying will ensure that engineers in these industries will in future receive instruction in soil mechanics as part of their normal training.
The steps taken, and being taken by the National Coal Board in regard to tip safety were outlined in the debate last year. There has been no loss of momentum. The work in identifying, watching and dealing with tips that may present a hazard, and the training of the men who manage the tips continues. I have already mentioned the code of practice which the Board is drawing up to govern its tipping operations, and work on it is, I understand, well advanced.
Although we can never be wholly satisfied in a matter of this kind, the overall position appears to be under control. All concerned are conscious of the hazards which mine and quarry heaps can present and considerable effort is being devoted to ensure that risks are reduced so far as practicable. Comprehensive surveys are being made of all tips which might be thought to present a hazard, and steps are being taken to put things right wherever there are grounds for anxiety. The Bill now before the House will fill the gap in our legislation and provide the sanctions and formal powers that are at present lacking.
The Bill is designed to deal with all accumulations of solid or liquid refuse from mines and quarries. Part I is in effect an extension of the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, and deals with all tips whether working or not, associated with mines and quarries at present subject to the Act and as such under the supervision of H.M. Inspectors of Mines and Quarries.
Part II of the Bill is concerned with tips belonging to mines and quarries which have been abandoned and are no longer under that supervision. The provisions of each Part, are therefore, somewhat different though the objective is the same—to eliminate hazards arising from the sort of instability which caused the disaster at Aberfan.
Part I of the Bill requires that all tips belonging to active mines and quarries shall be made and kept "secure"—the best word we can find to describe the kind of stability and safety we hope to achieve for accumulations of solid or liquid refuse which are being, or may be, added to the tips in the course of mining and quarrying operations. It gives me wide powers to make regulations to this end, as regards such matters as the land on which tipping may take place, the keeping of records and plans, including geological maps, and the making of tipping rules.
Following the precedent of the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, the Bill imposes specific duties on managers and owners of mines and quarries. Very broadly, the manager of a mine will be responsible for the security of active, that is working tips, associated with his mine. Other tips are the responsibility of the owners. The Bill also extends the powers of H.M. Inspectors of Mines and Quarries by enabling them to obtain information, and have tests carried out to check the security of a tip, and gives them the same powers as they have under the 1954 Act to have matters put right if a remedy is required for an immediate or apprehended danger.
Disregard of the provisions of Part I of the Bill will, as is the case with the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, be a criminal offence, and may involve up to three months imprisonment in addition to or in substitution for the penalties laid down in the Act.
Part II of the Bill is differently constructed, since it deals with tips which have ceased to form part of the mining and quarrying industries. It covers the many thousands of tips belonging to abandoned mines and quarries from earliest times—the chalk heaps made by Stone Age man in his search for flints, the spoil left by the Phoenicians in search of tin, and the large pit heaps made before and since the Industrial Revoluttion. Many tips are no longer recognisable as such; they have been overrgown with vegetation and have long formed part of the landscape. Others are more recent. But with the passage of time, most of these tips have become increasingly stable, thanks to natural consolidation. The surveys that have been carried out since Aberfan indicate that only a very


small proportion could present any hazard to members of the public. But because nothing can be certain, we have felt it necessary to give local authorities powers to identify and deal with any tips that give grounds for anxiety and to make provision for Exchequer grants.
In exercising these powers, a local authority will be acting both in its traditional rôle as the body responsible for the general welfare of its constituents and as the body best able in practice to do the job. Powers under this part of the Act will be given to the Ministers responsible for the activities of local authorities—the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales, who already have the machinery needed to deal with grant questions. The powers which the Bill will confer on local authorities are powers to obtain information, to enter land and carry out tests to determine whether a tip constitutes a hazard by reason of its instability.

Mr. John Nott: Does the Bill apply only to tips? Can it also be defined as applying to ancient mine shafts, because this is our greatest problem in Cornwall? It is not just tips which cause great danger and hazard but also shafts.

Mr. Mason: This applies only to mining and quarrying tips, those active and those abandoned. It does not apply to mine shafts. I understand that we have powers to deal with that anyway, especially if they are still under the authority of the National Coal Board. There may be abandoned mine shafts and it might be difficult to trace the owners, for what responsibilities they have. This applies to mine and quarrying tips only, and does not cover, in order that I may save the time of hon. Gentlemen who may wish to speak later, refuse from the steel industry, the chemical industry or any other industries, which are mainly covered by the Factories Acts.
I was saying that the powers which the Bill will confer on local authorities are powers to obtain information, enter land and carry out tests to determine whether a tip constitutes a hazard by reason of its instability. If it does, there is power for the local authority to require the owner to carry out remedial operations,

or, if the authority prefers to do the work itself, it may do so. The cost of such remedial operations, and of any damage caused by them, will fall upon the owner of the tip, but the Bill also provides that the owner or the local authority may recover the whole or part of these costs from other persons whose action may have contributed to the unsatisfactory condition of the tip.
The Bill thus imposes liabilities which could be considerable in some cases. Accordingly extensive provision has been made for appeals to the court, as regards the need for remedial operations and the apportionment and amount of costs. It will be for the court to make up its mind where the burden ought properly to fall in the light of the criteria set out in the Bill. On the principle that prevention is better than cure the Government hope that local authorities will identify cases of potential instability at an early stage, when the costs of putting things right by such means as improved drainage will normally cost little in relation to the potential liability that could fall on a tip owner if a tip slide occurs. But, recognising that an owner or a contributor might be a small man, who could not face the cost of extensive operations which could conceivably be needed, the Bill gives power to the planning Ministers to make grants towards the costs they would not otherwise recover. Each case will, of course, have to be treated on its merits, and it is impossible to attempt to deal adequately with the hypothetical cases.
That is the scheme of the Bill—an extension of the Mines and Quarries Act to deal with tips forming part of the mining and quarrying industries, and a supplementation of the Public Health Act to deal with others. As the Aberfan Tribunal pointed out
Such dangers as arise are almost invariably in respect of active working tips".
The mining and quarrying industries are acutely conscious of the dangers that these can cause and are making strenuous efforts to minimise them. The provisions of the Bill, the advice of the Tip Safety Committee and the increased powers of H.M. Inspectors should maintain and improve standards. There should be no lack of the guidance whose absence was criticised by the Tribunal. As to the other tips, I think we can be


confident that local authorities will be vigilant in the interests of public safety, and that the Bill will give them all the powers they need. There should not, therefore be another Aberfan.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. David Gibson-Watt: I am sure that the House is grateful to the Minister for the workmanlike way in which he deployed the case for the Bill. We are grateful to him for telling us the steps taken between the time of the disaster at Aberfan and the present day. The Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill makes it clear that the major reason for the Bill is the implementation of the recommendations of the Tribunal's Report on the Aberfan disaster. It is almost certain that the Bill would not have seen the light of day had the Aberfan disaster not taken place.
On the Statute Book there is a long list of legislation going back as far as the end of the 17th century. In this legislation, although tremendous attention was focused on the danger in the pit and at the pit face, in none of it were tips specifically referred to. It will be claimed, rightly, that the Bill improves and clarifies the duties of those operating mines and quarries and that if its provisions are carried out future disaster cannot and should not take place. But it is clear from the Tribunal's Report that all the duties and the general practice were known before the disaster.
The Aberfan disaster occurred as a result of human failure on the part of a number of people in various ways. When the Bill has been passed—we shall try to improve it in Committee, but we shall support it and speed it on its way to the Statute Book—the safety of future generations in situations such as that which obtained at Aberfan will still be in the hands of individual human beings, capable or incapable of doing their duty, and it will depend on the character and responsibility of these individuals. In such a large organisation as the National Coal Board, it is doubly important for men at various stages of authority to know and to live up to their responsibilities and duties.
I agree entirely with what was said in the debate on the Tribunal's Report by

my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Fylde (Colonel Lancaster), namely, that the Chairman of the Southwest District, Mr. Kellett, a much respected technical officer, was not allowed by the Chairman of the National Coal Board to give evidence before the Tribunal I must say again, because it underlines my point, that it shows the failure of Lord Robens to recognise that his district chairman was an important cog in the chain of those in authority in the Coal Board and that he should have given evidence. I repeat that it is a continual sense of personal responsibility among those in charge at all levels which will achieve the aim of the Bill, which hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to see passed.
The Tribunal made some scathing recommendations about the failure of members of the Coal Board. This matter was debated as long ago as October, 1967—over a year ago. One of the objectives of the Bill is the final removal of the tip complex at Aberfan. The House may remember that we on this side strongly pressed the Government at that time to remove the tip complex completely. They were not in a position to commit them selves to saying that they could go as far as removing the whole complex. No one felt the matter more deeply than the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Wales, because he had great responsibility as Minister of State at the time for helping the people of Aberfan in their distress. Those of us who went to Aberfan after the disaster and then left know far less than he does about the personal problems and tragedies in the village. We respect the way in which he and his predecessor acted in this awful affair. Nobody is more pleased than he that the Bill has been introduced.
While acknowledging that some of the tip complex at Aberfan has been reshaped I must record our regret that the necessary legislation has taken some time to come forward, although the Minister could, rightly, answer by saying that this is one of the first Bills to be brought forward this Session. We hope that when winding up the debate the Secretary of State will say a little more about how far the Government have gone towards completely removing the Aberfan tip complex.
The aim of the Bill must be to save human life, whether the threat comes from the tip of a working mine which contains solids or liquids, or overgrown slate quarries in North Wales, or from the disused quarries and lead mines referred to a moment or two ago in other parts of the country. We believe that there is scope for widening the Bill to embrace some of the hazards which exist not just in tips, but in holes which present dangers in other parts of the country. This was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) during the Minister's speech.
Ours is a small country, with a rapidly increasing population. Every day our young people seek more avenues of adventure. It is in this wider field that the Bill should try to save life and we should widen its scope. This is underlined in a letter which I, together with other hon. Members, received from the Urban District Councils' Association, in which it asks for consideration to be given to the question of chemical tips. The Minister may, rightly, say that this is a Committee point which he will consider. I hope that he will do so.
There is a curious omission from the Bill. There is no specific mention anywhere in it of the Coal Board. I see that other hon. Members have noticed that. It is curious considering that the whole object of the Bill is to avoid a repetition of a disaster which was the Board's responsibility.
Secondly, the Bill repeatedly provides that it shall be the duty of the owner and of the manager of every mine and of the owner of every quarry to do certain things. Why does it refer merely to the owner of every quarry? Why does it not refer to the owner and manager of every quarry? No doubt there is a simple answer to this point, and we should like to know it.
In hindsight, with the horror of the tip slide at Aberfan still in mind, it seems almost incredible that the legislation on the Statute Book includes no provision for the safety of tips. However, I am told by those with experience of the industry that the answer is that there had been no loss of life from tips for over 100 years and that the more obvious dangers to life lay in the pits, and the mortality figures throughout the

years have shown this. It was for that reason that successive legislators concentrated on the workings themselves.
As I have said, the disaster two years ago was caused by a combination of human failure in a sphere in which the common practice of mine owners and managers had proved entirely adequate in the past. But there was no previous legislation on tips. As the Tribunal's Report points out, in Finding III, on page 131:
There is no legislation dealing with the safety of tips in force in this or any country, except in part of West Germany and in South Africa.
It could be said, therefore, that those of us who sit in the House now, and who have sat in it at other times, bear a very small measure of responsibility for the lack of that legislation.
There are present several hon. Members who have personal responsibility for coal mining and other industries. There are those who have coal mining constituencies, and there are those who have themselves either worked in the pits or played a notable part in the mining industry. I look forward to hearing the contribution by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Fylde, who has considerable experience in this field.
I want to make one or two brief comments about Part II of the Bill. It makes no provision for the clearing of tips on the ground of improvement of amenities. It may be argued that this would open up a huge vista of expense. I can imagine the gentlemen in the Treasury shaking in their shoes. But in his opening remarks the Minister rightly prided himself on the part which he has played in previous debates with regard to the amenity aspect of the problem.
For many years ahead, as our population increases and as land and open country are subjected to further claims by a multiplicity of national and local demands, the removal of tips will not be limited merely to those which are shown to be dangerous. If I am right about this, there is all the more reason why the large number of small owners who have disused pits on their land should be actively considered during the discussion of the Bill. Legislation that we now pass in respect of disused pits in Part II could well be the foundation for future action


on the amenity side of the tip problem. I hope that the Minister will bear this in mind and understand why we shall continually ask for assurances that individual owners will be allowed and encouraged to play their part in removing tips. In Part II we should consider the possibility of actively encouraging individual owners.
It seems to me that when Richard Llewellyn Lloyd wrote his great book, "How Green Was My Valley" the accent, rightly, went on the word "was". Those valleys were once green and lovely, as were Scottish and English mining areas before the coming of the Industrial Revolution. They can be green again provided that we take a long-term view of the remedial work that is needed. It is a huge job but not an impossible one.
The transport element in the removal of tips is a very high one. There are only two instances, in my view, where tips can be relatively cheap to move. The first is where a new motorway or some such work—a barrage, perhaps—is so close to a tip that it can be removed. The second is where the mineral content is high and can fetch a price which will wholly or partly pay for the removal, or even make a profit in certain cases.
Although the local authority must have the primary rôle here—I do not deny that at the same time individual owners—I admit the difficulty of tracing some of them—should be actively encouraged to move tips. In this respect, planning permission should not lightly be withheld from them by local authorities. On page 6 of the Explanatory Memorandum a case is given of a grant given by the Government to a local authority to take remedial action in respect of a tip which belonged to a private owner.
When we see the amounts of money with which we are concerned—£30,000 is the figure given in that part of the Memorandum—I think that we should also consider that it would be right for the Government, while recognising the major rôle of the planning authorities, to allow grants for private owners as well as for local authorities. In spite of what the Minister said in one part of his speech, I cannot find a provision in the Bill for this to be done. If I am wrong, I should be happy to be corrected. As I say, the local authorities will be actively

concerned with this problem, but, wherever possible, we should help individuals not only to deal with danger but to improve amenity.
There is one final point which I make in conclusion. Many people abroad think of Wales—I am speaking particularly of Wales, at the moment—as a country of coal tips and slag tips. This can be very damaging to our country from many points of view, including tourism. We ought to be at pains to make clear that the desolation of the pit tips and the slate quarry areas of Northern Wales is confined to a very small part. If we can widen the scope of the Bill and make clear that we are going to great lengths to improve amenity, I am sure that this will be beneficial.
We welcome the Bill, we look forward to further contributions from both sides of the House, and I give the Minister the assurance that we shall not in any way delay the passage of the Bill to the Statute Book.

6.37 p.m.

Mr. S. O. Davies: I shall not detain the House very long, because there is no doubt that a great deal will be said about the Bill in Committee.
I am glad, Mr. Speaker, that I have caught your eye, because, as my right hon. Friend the Minister stated, the appalling disaster at Aberfan occurred in my constituency, and I live in the shadow of its consequences every time I am at home.
I hope that the human effects of the disaster will not be regarded as having gone by and the disaster as just an unpleasant incident in our industrial history. Last weekend I spent the greater part of two days among the people of Aberfan. They do not need to tell me how they feel. I can see it. I can also see the consequences of the appalling disaster which is affecting the lives of some of my constituents in that tragic village.
Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the immediate extent of the tragedy. When it happened that October morning, just over two years ago, 116 little children were killed, and 28 adults, most of whom were known personally to me and some of whom were my intimate friends. I dare not go over the individual tragedies


of this or that home that I know so well, but there is just one reference I want to make so that the House may be reminded of the importance of the effect of the Bill.
A friend of mine, a very popular young man in the teaching profession there, had not left his home more than 25 minutes before the whole of his house was destroyed and his wife and two children buried within it. I shall not give many of these instances; they are very painful to me even to this day, but I must mention just one more, of a charming, happy little home from which the mother had just gone out to do a little shopping and within minutes the house was demolished, and all they had in it, and she lost her husband and their two young children. I could multiply these tragedies if I reflected upon them and remember them, and I cannot help but remember them.
I hope that my right hon. Friend and those who, with him, drafted the Bill will remember that this tragedy was the result of the sheer recklessness of the owners in the past and, it must be said, of the considerable indifference of the present owners. I could elaborate upon that, but would take up much more time than I wish to this evening.
However, there are aspects of the Bill, which leave me far from satisfied, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will have something to tell us about them at the end of the debate. One of them the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) has already referred to I do not like, perhaps because I do not fully understand it, the position of the local authorities under the Bill. I should like to get an absolutely straight answer to this question. By the Bill they are given wide scope to act, to work and, incidentally, to spend a lot of money. Will they be fully repaid for the work which they do?
We should not put too much reliance on what are known as experts in soil mechanics. I have said before—I do not know whether I have said it in the House—that a person can be an expert in soil mechanics in Surrey or Hampshire, or one or another of the largely agricultural areas of the country, but he must know a great deal more than mere soil mechanics if his knowledge is to be useful in a coalfield such as ours

in South Wales, with its deep, narrow valleys, and steep hillsides which have been covered by millions of tons of debris from the collieries.
It is not merely a question of soil mechanics there. One must know the extent to which coal has been taken and about the pits. One must also know something about the exact geology of the districts where they are. One should be fully informed to what extent, if any, there is debris underground, perhaps undetected, or to what extent it has been stowed scientifically.
Our South Wales coalfield is notorious for its refusal to stow what the collier calls "this rubbish" at the coal face. Already, vast subsidence has started in that coalfield, and there is more, unfortunately, to come. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) can say a great deal on what has happened with subsidence there.
I want my right hon. Friend to make it abundantly clear to what extent the local authorities will have to spend money which is not to be repaid by the Government. We are entitled to get an answer to that immediately.
There is another thing I should like to be told by my right hon. Friend, because he and I had talks about it several weeks ago—not, I am sorry to say, very happy talks. Are the Government still determined to take from Aberfan £250,000? If so, how can I accept any assurance by my right hon. Friends that the local authorities will be fully repaid for the money they are expected to spend under the Bill? It is a cruel thing to take that money from that village after that appalling disaster, which appals even to this day. My friends and others, the finest experts we can get, are changing its immediate environment to help those who have experienced such tragic losses, to help them to overcome them and to take an interest in the new world which is growing up there. Yet the Government have come in and said, "Do not carry on with that £250,000", while that nightmarish, ghastly tip still overhangs Aberfan, and possibly will slaughter more people in the future.
I have had to mention this because there is a good deal of feeling about it in my constituency. I hope that I may have answers to the two points which I


have put. To what extent are the local authorities which have some very dangerous tips in their areas expected to spend the moneys of the people in trying to make those tips safe? Have now the Government abandoned the idea of taking, wholly illegally, wholly by sheer blackmail, £250,000, which we want so that we can make a new environment for those stricken people in Aberfan?

6.50 p.m.

Colonel C. G. Lancaster: I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies) in what he has said; he has an intimate knowledge of what happened at Aberfan which I do not possess. Although our discussions are of great importance to South Wales, they are equally important in all parts of the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt), in opening the debate, welcomed the Bill, and so do I, although I deplore, as do all other hon. Members, the occasion of its coming before us.
It may be wondered why, for generations, there was no legislation on dirt tips. There are two reasons for this. In the first instance, it would have been, and indeed still is, excessively difficult to draft legislation to cover all the geographical and topographical variations in the location of tips. Today, there are fewer tips, certainly fewer active tips, than there were, and it would have been exceedingly difficult to draft satisfactory legislation; and this must be recognised by all Governments.
The second reason is that the Mines Inspectorate had never pressed for legislation. It took the view, rightly, that past experience had shown no reason why there should be legislation. As my hon. Friend said, research shows that before the Aberfan disaster there had never been a fatality caused by dirt tips, and during my short speech I will endeavour to show why that was.
Before starting a tip a colliery undertaking had to have regard to a number of important aspects. The ground had to be unbroken, and there had to be no streams or springs nearby. Springs are not, as was sugeeted in the evidence given by Lord Robens, in the bowels of the earth; they are on the surface, and both springs and streams had to be

avoided. The ground had to be reasonably level, and great care had to be taken in the tipping. Tipping had to take place in such a manner that the angle of repose was not disturbed, and a great deal of trouble had to be taken about variations in the spoil tip as between dry soil and effluent. Soil mechanics also had to be considered.
In addition, there was the general practice of the industry, which was one reason why no fatality had occurred until the Aberfan disaster. I am certain that that disaster could and should have been avoided; make no mistake about that. The general practice was perfectly clear and simple. A number of men worked on the dirt tip under the supervision of a charge-hand. Mechanical contrivances were also under his general supervision. Above all, he had two tasks to perform, and if he did not perform them he was dismissed, and rightly so. He had to report immediately if he saw any unusual disturbance or slide in the dirt tip, and he had to report the appearance of water.
The colliery manager had to go up the tip every month. Probably the under-manager would go up once a fortnight and the colliery manager once a month, to make certain that these regulations were being carried out, but, more particularly, to decide where the spoil would be tipped in the ensuing period. On those occasions he would point out to the charge-hand any part of the tip which might be worrying him, and tell the charge-hand that he must watch the tip at that point and report any movement to the surface manager, or, in a small pit, the surface foreman, who, in turn, had to pass on the information to the colliery manager. That was the practice everywhere, not just in the East Midlands, where I worked.
Over a period, management have come to me from different parts of the country, and they were all familiar with this procedure. Two of my management, after nationalisation, went to South Wales, one as chairman and one as chief mechanical officer, and they both told me that they had passed on this practice.
In great measure it was because of this practice, one with which the Mines Inspectorate is familiar, that disasters have not occurred. The Inspectorate played a part in this. It was responsible


for the mechanical devices used on the tips, and if a mine accident occurred the colliery owner was under statutory obligation to comply with the Board of Trade regulations and report the accident. At that point the Mines Inspectorate came in and took appropriate action.
Hon. Members who took part in the passage of the 1954 Mines and Quarries Act may wonder why tips were not dealt with on that occasion. There were two reasons. One was that we were dealing in that Bill with the extractive side of the industry and, secondly, neither the Government of the day nor the Mines Inspectorate considered that it was necessary to deal with tips.
Now this ghastly accident has happened, we are confronted with this Bill, and, as I say, we welcome it. May I add one word of caution. We should be ill-advised to take the attitude from Aberfan onwards that tips are immensely dangerous things; they are not. What happened at Aberfan was, as my hon. Friend said, the fault of several indiduals at various levels, and that can happen even despite legislation.
In the last resort, it depends upon whether or not the regulations are carried out. It may mean that people who do not carry out the regulations will go to prison, but it was precisely the same in the old days; people did not go to prison for it, but unless the regulations had been carried out fatalities would have occurred.
It may be suggested that in the old days the colliery owners would not have done so because buildings on ground would have been affected and compensation would have to be paid, but that would not be fair, since the same principle has been carried on after nationalisation.

Mr. Arthur Probert: The hon. Gentleman is implying that there were no serious lip slides before Aberfan. Is he aware that the Report mentions tip slides in 1939 at Cilfynydd, and in 1944, at the No. 4 tip at Aberfan? It was fortunate that no one was killed as a result of these serious tip slides.

Colonel Lancaster: I am aware that there was a slip there two years before. A point I pressed during the debate on the Aberfan disaster was that Mr. Kellett,

who dealt with that slip, was the very man who was not called by the Tribunal to give evidence. There were accidents, but there has never been a fatal accident. Although there is always an element of danger, it would be unwise to overemphasise it.
Strict regulations will be brought about by the Bill, and there should not be any great danger in the future. The disaster should not have occurred. It could have been foreseen. It has been suggested that geological conditions and the like contributed, but geology does not come into it, though topography does. That disaster was caused by negligence on the part of the Coal Board and its servants.
I like the Bill. It is a step in the right direction. If, in Committee, we turn it into a really good Bill, it will be, I hope, to the eventual help of the National Coal Board and, indeed, all those who work in mines or quarries.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Joe Ashton: Mr. Speaker, I request the indulgence of the House to introduce myself. I am the new Member for Bassetlaw, and I am very honoured to be here. I am grateful for this opportunity to make my maiden speech.
Bassetlaw was represented by the Right Hon. Frederick Bellenger for about 33 years. In that time, he became very well known and liked in the constituency. Eventually, his popularity was acknowledged just before his death, when he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Worksop.
In Bassetlaw, a very varied constituency, the main industries are mining and agriculture. Currently, about 6,000 miners are employed there, and many more retired miners live there. Obviously, the subject that we are debating is one of great concern to them.
Fortunately, it is a mining area which is developing. The most modern mine in the country, Bevercotes, is in the constituency, and, although there are geological problems there, we expect a very long life for it. One mine, at Firbeck, is closing at Christmas, though I am glad to say that it is not due to a shortage of coal or to economic reasons, but merely because of the presence of gas in the seam.
The modern mines in my constituency give rise to an interest in tips and their safety because they will be producing material for tips for many years to come. At Manton, extensive experiments have been conducted to grow vegetation on tips and so improve their visual appearance. This is very important from the point of view of attracting new industry, because, in a mining and agricultural area, where more and more mechanisation is taking place and there are fewer opportunities for school leavers, new industry must be attracted. In that connection, we await eagerly the Report of the Hunt Committee, but that does not mean that nothing has happened in that direction in the past.
If we hope to attract new industry to an area, potential industrialists must be convinced that there is no danger from tips and that something can be done to make them less of an eyesore than they have been for many years. We have a flat terrain in Bassetlaw. There are no slopes, as there are in Wales, and there have been no problems of tip safety. At Harworth Colliery, an overhead conveyor has been constructed, and wastage is carried in large buckets to the tip. It has been found necessary to develop an industrial site in the area and, though it is unsightly to carry slag across it by cable, if we can convince potential industrialists that there is no danger they will be reassured. In time, we hope to be able to make the site more attractive to industrialists and find some other way of disposing of the slag.
The problems of mine and tip safety and of clearing derelict sites are very important to Bassetlaw, and I am pleased to have been able to make my first speech in this House on the subject.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you, my right hon. and hon. Friends and right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite for being patient with me not only during this speech, but during the past three days in the House. I have received a great deal of help from everyone.

7.5 p.m.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: In accordance with the custom of the House, it is my pleasant duty to congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on his maiden speech. Having heard him, may I say that it is not only a duty

but a pleasure to do so. Certainly he will win his way into the high regard of the House if subsequent speeches of his are as brief. He has not taken long to take the plunge since his victory at the by-election. It is often said that the best thing to do is to take the plunge early, and he has followed that advice. He chose a subject about which he knows a great deal and which is close to his heart.
There is a good story about a rather bumptious and young new Member who was bold enough to approach the great Sir Winston Churchill to ask when he should speak. He was astonished to be told by Sir Winston, "Never." On asking why, Sir Winston replied, "It is better that Members should ask why you do not speak than why you do." Having heard the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, I am certain that that advice would not be tendered to him. We look forward to hearing him again on subjects on which clearly he can contribute a great deal to our debate.
I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House were pleased to hear his kind references to his predecessor, the late Fred Bellenger, who for many years was a genial, respected and popular Member. We were very pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman speaking about him so feelingly.
If I may turn now to the Bill, I am sure that we all agree that few Measures could have such universal approval as this one. The House has a debt to pay to the people of this country, because in 1954, when the Mines and Quarries Bill was being considered, I do not think that tip safety was mentioned. If it was, no one suggested any kind of Amendment to that Bill. Despite the great expertise in the House on this subject, it was not appreciated that tip safety was a matter which should be considered as needing urgent attention. It was the dreadful tragedy in Aberfan which brought the matter home to us. Now, there is universal agreement on the need for such a Bill as this, and clearly it is to be welcomed.
I think that the important provision is Clause 3, and in that connection I agree with what the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths) said during the Aberfan debate, when he pointed out that there had been a great danger of


whittling away the responsibilities and duties of the mine manager. Always, there must be someone in charge, and that responsibility is in no way limited by advice which he may have or control which may be exercised over him by a group or area manager. In a mine, just as on a ship, someone has to carry responsibility, and it is right that it should be the manager.
Professionally, I have been involved in matters concerning mines for many years. I think that it was one of the great mistakes in the evolution of the Coal Board seemingly to take away certain responsibilities from the mine manager. If I judge the situation aright, that trend has been reversed to some extent, and certainly in this Bill responsibility for a coal tip and its safety is placed firmly on the shoulders of the manager. He can call for advice from the group or area, and I am sure that it is always available to him, but there can be no doubt where the prime responsibility lies.
In accordance with hopes already expressed in the House, I hope that the Bill is what might be regarded as a first instalment.
We are concerned about the amenities of these tips. I am always astonished when I go to any mining area at the fantastic amount of energy that must have gone into that area in turning out these tips. It is a comment on the enormous creative activity that went into the Industrial Revolution. The mining areas of Wales, Scotland and England, which are now in considerable decline, played an enormous part in establishing the prime position of this country industrially in the last century and at the turn of this century. In debates on Welsh matters, as the Secretary of State knows, I have repeatedly argued that in the last century and at the turn of this century the mining areas contributed far more to the general economy of the country than today. This is an economic fact.
But we have paid a heavy price for that fantastic energy in that fantastic era of industrial creation, by the presence of these coal tips. We never thought, with all the scarring we would have, that we would eventually pay the terrible human price that we paid at Aberfan. As a society we owe it to ourselves and to our children to repair these scars. I hope that the Bill is a first instalment of

a general programme to get rid of them where there is any possibility of danger. In Aberfan, the psychological scar deserves to be healed, whatever the cost. Even £3 or £4 million is small compared with the wealth which has come from the earth at Aberfan and of which the whole community has had the benefit.
There should be a national campaign to restore these areas to their former greenness. Looking at some of the valleys in Wales I always think how beautiful they must have been. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) said that he did not have the same problem, because the land around his constituency is level. But when I look at the valleys in Wales I always think how beautiful they must have been. I am sure that with modern techniques and determination they can be restored to their former beauty. The community has a duty to see that this is done.
I am sure that the Bill enters upon its Second Reading in the House with the blessing of Members on both sides.

7.12 p.m.

Mr. Fred Evans: The Bill, arising as it does from the report on the Aberfan tragedy, makes it difficult for those of us from South Wales to be completely objective. I have every sympathy with the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. S. O. Davies).
I would refer briefly to the Aberfan tragedy. I was born in Aberfan and received my first education in the school which was destroyed and in which one member of my faimly lost his only two children.
At the outset I pay great tribute to the personal interest which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister took in this matter, particularly in the latter stages when he persuaded those responsible to release the money to contribute towards getting rid of the tip.
I pay an equally sincere tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales for the deep humanity which he showed in dealing with the problems of this deeply troubled village.
I must differ from my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydvil. Whether the people of Aberfan contribute or not, the most important thing is that this dreadful reminder of their sorrow must be


got rid of. As the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) pointed out, we must deal with the psychological scars as well as the physical ones. I know from my own family how deep are the psychological scars in this village.
The Bill will receive a general welcome in the House. It will be particularly welcome in South Wales because of the topography of our valleys, with houses clustered around the collieries and the colliery tips either on the fringe of the built-up area on a precipitious slope or, in some cases, dumped in the middle of the built-up area, as in my own village which achieved television fame four years ago when the whole thing went to fire. For a couple of months on television we saw pictures of the green and red ten-foot-high flames which, standing above and looking down, reminded me of Dante's Inferno. In moments of wild imagination I sometimes dreamed that at the bottom I could see the shrivelled souls of the coal owners who originally put the stuff there.
We have had to live with this problem for a very long time. One place in my constituency has a very great distinction: it has the biggest tip of colliery waste in the whole of Europe—probably in the whole world—and it stands like an obscene monument above what was once a very beautiful valley.
Although hon. Members have pointed out that there have not been disasters before on the scale of Aberfan—indeed, there have been instances of loss of life—there have been great social disasters arising from these tips—flooding of houses with mounds of slurry carried down, the destruction of furniture and the blocking of roads and sewers—and huge sums have had to be paid by local authorities to deal with these matters. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery mentioned the loss of amenity in what is still a very beautiful area of Wales.
I would draw attention to one or two points in the Bill about which I am very enthusiastic. I hope that the Bill will be a first step only in a general attack on the problem. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil, I am concerned about the financial side to local

authorities. When this dreadful tip went afire in my own village, the content of lethal gas in the atmosphere was about 1,000 per cent. greater than the level necessary to kill. A section of the village had to be evacuated as a matter of emergency. The local authority had to meet the bill, and it never got anything back.
I am equally perturbed that the delegation of powers to the local authority is yet again a piece of permissive legislation. The authority is defined as a county or borough authority and it may or may not delegate these powers to the district council. In South Wales, particularly, the district councils are nearest to the problem. They live with it continually. In South Wales a great deal of money is being made out of a second exploitation of the first exploitation. People are washing old colliery tips to retrieve the volatile content. They are making a great deal of money out of it and again wrecking the landscape. Of course, if they have to obtain planning permission—and they do not always need it if they do the job for the Coal Board—they have to restore the land.
I think that it will be sensible to have another look at this to see whether we can get responsibility back to the lower levels. We talk enough about participation in this House. There is a piece of direct participation by people who have lived with the problem all their lives. While I do not want to animadvert about local authorities, we all realise that there are county authorities and county authorities. Where one authority is only too glad to delegate powers given under this permissive legislation, side by side we find another authority is very hard in its attitude.
I, too, hope that the Bill is only a first step. The basis of this Measure is security. I hope that there will be a second stage, when we can make an imaginative approach to the whole business of industrial scars, and consider, in particular, my country with its glorious valleys. Sometimes when I look at it, and in my imagination get rid of the industrial scars, I see some of the most desirable commuter country that I have ever seen. I welcome the Bill, but I ask my right hon. Friend to consider the points which I have raised.

7 20 p.m.

Mr. David Crouch: A moment ago I almost anticipated being called to speak, and I crave the indulgence of the House and that of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) in what I have to say.
The House has approached this vital problem with great care, and very seriously. While the debate has been going on I think we have all become aware of the serious consideration which hon. Members can give to this problem. I listened with great respect to the speech of the hen. Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. S. O. Davies), who reminded us of that tragic day of the Aberfan disaster. I think that he was right to do so, because it is that which precipitated the Bill. I welcome the presentation of this Measure so soon in this Session, it having been announced only a week ago in the Gracious Speech. I value, too, the contribution of the hon. Member for Caerphilly, who spoke with great feeling and knowledge of this subject.
I welcome the Bill, with its proper accent on safety, the attention that it draws to the danger of building tips, and also to the danger which may be present in disused tips. I am sorry, however, that no mention is made of the danger of quarries. In certain instances the extractive industry leaves behind a positive danger in the quarry itself, and I hope that the Minister will bear this in mind. Not far from my constituency there is a dangerous area, Beachy Head, but in Kent, along the Thames estuary, there are equally dangerous areas where men have quarried for years for chalk for the cement industry.
I echo what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt), and also by others, that the Bill considers the problem of danger from mines, but does not consider the question of amenity. This is something which we must impress on the Minister, and consider in Committee when we are dealing with the problems of tips resulting from mining and quarrying.
It may not be recognised that in my corner of Kent I could be described by some as a typical miners' M.P. It is not always remembered that in the quarter where I have my constituency of Canterbury there is an outcrop of four

mines, one in my constituency and three in that of Dover, and all these mines have tips. Admittedly they are on flat ground, and, therefore, do not constitute a serious danger, but they are an eyesore. They are less than 50 years old, and are continuing to grow. I hope that we shall consider the appearance of our tips, as well as the danger they present. In this industrial age of great progress, I think we should ensure that we progress both industrially and culturally. It is a pity that in concentrating on industrial progress we often overlook what we leave behind as a result of that progress.
I think that we should consider the appearance of our towns and our countryside. After all, we take great pride in town planning. Earlier tonight I was glad to see present a Minister from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and I hope that my thoughts will be conveyed to him. We have recently won an international award for the planning of Cumbernauld, and we are justly proud of that. I could quote many examples of towns which are very near winning an award such as that won by Cumbernauld.
We plan our roads, too, not only from the point of view of safety, but to achieve something of beauty as they cut across the countryside. Recently I drove down the length of the Ml, not having been on it for some time prior to that. I joined it near Chesterfield, and I was amazed at the beauty of the countryside for 50 or 60 miles south of that area. I had not noticed this beauty before, because I had always used old roads which ran through what I can only call the waste lands of the industrial North and Midlands of the nineteenth century. We must not allow these tips to remain as eyesores.
I am sorry, too, that the Bill does not put an obligation on quarry owners to reclaim land which they have quarried. I know that we are talking about the mountains of refuse which result from the extraction of coal—and I have mentioned the dangers of the quarries—but I think that we must consider the problem from the amenity point of view. I think that quarriers should have an obligation to restore the land after they have used it. I know that many quarry owners feel that they have an obligation to reclaim land, or at least to make it a valuable addition to the countryside after


they have worked it. I know, too, that in many cases the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, before granting a licence for quarrying, stipulates that the land must be reclaimed and restored after use, but what I am concerned about is the waste of land in areas where there are tips.
This afternoon I was attracted to an observation by Lord Robens last week when he was addressing a conference of planners at Brighton. He referred to a frightening quantity of 150,000 acres of land being rendered useless by industry. This is a backlog of land rendered useless, largely by the extractive industries, over the last 150 years.
More serious is the observation which I found in this week's Country Life, concerning the restoration which is taking place today, which it claimed was not keeping pace with the new encroachments. It said:
Lord Robens's figure corresponds exactly with an estimate given by J. R. Oxenham in Reclaiming Derelict Land, published in 1966. This expert accepted 150,000 acres as merely 'an attempt to measure the backlog which has accumulated during the past century'. Taking into account the activities tending to increase the area, he considered that 'there may well be more dereliction within the next 30 years than has accumulated during the past century'.
That is the end of the quotation, and the end of my observations. I give that quotation because it should have an important bearing on our thoughts as we deal with the Bill. I now merely affirm my strong support for the Bill. I will do what I can to hasten its passage on to the Statute Book.

7.31 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Probert: This is a non-controversial matter, and we shall all be in almost total agreement with the sentiments expressed by hon. Members on both sides. I could not agree more with what the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) said about restoration and reclamation.
I welcome the Bill, and express my appreciation to both my right hon. Friends—one of whom has addressed the House already and the other of whom will wind up the debate—and to the Government for the expeditious manner in which they have brought the Bill forward. It is my duty to say those things because there

are a number of coal tips in my area, one of which recently started to move, thereby causing great anxiety.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Power has said that trouble is invariably caused by active working tips. I have a theory that many tips which are now 40 or 50 years old are reaching a stage at which trouble can arise. The tip to which I have referred already was last tipped upon 50 years ago. It still has trees between 50 ft. and 100 ft. high on it. We should look more closely at tips which are not actively working, as well as keeping under observation those which are.
One consolation to be derived from the occurrence at the coal tip to which I have referred is that it provides a direct lesson in how to tackle an emergency. It is gratifying that the Government have accepted almost in total the conclusions of the tribunal suggesting legislative action. There are one or two points to which I should like to refer, which I hope can be considered further in Committee.
Safety is the overriding factor for consideration, but other factors are also worth remembering. Reclamation is important, as is amenity, especially in areas like South Wales, where land in the valleys which can be used for housing, industry and recreation is very scarce. Unfortunately, too many industrial scars remain in some mining areas. I agree with the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) that there is much too much talk about the so-called ugly nature of the South Wales valleys. Nevertheless, some scars remain.
Those who have been brought up in these areas have become so familiar with their surroundings that they forget that they cause inhibitions among those who visit the areas infrequently. I therefore stress the importance of programming the removal of unsightly tips as well as dangerous ones, for amenity reasons as well as for the provision of extra land. Some old tips have become moulded into the natural contours and are no longer unsightly; indeed, some have increased the natural beauty of the area. They have become grassed over, and trees are growing on them. Only a little attention is needed to make such tips things of beauty.
It is important that local authorities should be able to operate on a system of priorities in dealing with these tips. They should not worry about those which in no way detract from the natural beauty of the area, so long as they are not dangerous. When a local authority grants planning permission for the removal of a tip certain conditions ought to be laid down besides the normal ones. The most important condition concerns the time taken for removal. If tips are being removed by the efforts of only two or three men it is impossible for the work to be completed in even five years; the work could go on for 10, 20, or even 30 years. The two or three people working the tip are more concerned with commercial considerations, taking the stuff away when they need it so as to make the best profit.
In the general supervision of tip removal I suggest that the officers of the National Tip Safety Committee should have power to assist local authorities in enforcing the observance of certain conditions. This would be of considerable assistance to local authorities. I know that the Committee is considering a standard code of practice, and the question of time should form part of that code.
Clause 2 of the Bill defines the expression "tip". Under the present definition an accumulation of waste material of this kind can be dealt with only if it owes its origin to a mine or quarry. Hon. Members on both sides are aware that there can be other accumulations which are not covered by the Bill because they do not arise from the workings of mines or quarries. For example, there are tips of chemical waste. The Bill should also cater for these.
Clause 11 provides that county councils may delegate their powers to county district councils. I do not know what the Parliamentary draftsmen are up to here. This is a clear case where powers should be given directly to county district councils. This problem is a local one. County district councils have to live with it. I expect no trouble in Glamorgan, because relations between district councils and the county are fairly harmonious, but trouble could arise between other counties and county districts, especially in respect of subsection (4)(a) and (b). I mention this only so that hon. Members can appreciate my point. I feel that

this is a matter in respect of which most county councils would wish to abrogate their responsibility.
I am a little perturbed at the possibility of Part II presenting a problem in respect of the responsibilities of local authorities. If an owner cannot be traced, or knows nothing about his tip being made safe, the local authority will have to use its default powers. If it is subsequently shown to be dilatory, technically speaking, and a serious accident occurs, the local authority will be blamed. Acceptance by local authorities of liability must be conditional on their having the services of the Mines Inspectorate for reports on the condition of disused pits.
In a sense, Clause 25 is one of the most important Clauses. What is to be the extent of the grants? I have not been involved in the Aberfan issue of the national fund and how much should be contributed, but I am certain that in most mining districts of South Wales anything short of a 100 per cent. grant would be of serious consequence to the finances of the local authorities there—of such consequence that it could slow down the action we all want to encourage.
I have referred to this matter before in reference to the making safe of a tip in my constituency. I do not propose to repeat my remarks, except to say that in this case a local authority, with the full knowledge of all concerned, stepped in immediately to avert a very dangerous situation. This happened not so many months ago. After that had been done, there was much argument and much feeling about who was to pay and what grant the appropriate Department would allow. I believe that that was a scandalous state of affairs; and that such experience, if repeated, could produce hesitation on the part of local authority officials and councillors when immediate action was necessary. I do not say that it would, but bitter experience could produce inhibitions.
It is nonsense to quote in aid other calamities where the Government contribute and the local authority is called upon to bear some of the expenditure. There are two factors to be borne in mind in the present situation. First, the tips are there, and were deposited there many years ago. They are not natural phenomena, but a national heritage, even


though undesirable. They are, therefore, a national responsibility. Second, the cost of removal could be considerable. The cost at Aberfan is a case in point.
Since the cost of removing one tip could be of such magnitude, what would be the cost of removing several tips? A local authority might take several years to remove the tips, and the total cost could be very considerable. A local authority contribution of 10 per cent. of the cost would be far too high. It may sound extravagent on my part to expect local authorities to get a 100 per cent. grant, but I have listed my reasons for asking for it. In other respects, I give a hearty welcome to the Bill.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. John Nott: Memories of Aberfan are clearly with us this evening, and we were sharply reminded of that tragedy by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans), but the Bill does not apply solely to Wales. It applies, also, to the whole United Kingdom, and my present purpose is to ask the Ministers whether they could not slightly widen the scope of the Bill to include shafts. If we had a Bill "to make further provision in relation to tips and shafts associated with mines and quarries and to prevent disused tips and shafts constituting a danger to members of the public" the Bill would be a more embracing and useful Measure than it will be without the inclusion of the word "shafts".
Lord Robens, talking at the conference in Brighton, about tips and derelict land, said:
It is worth noting that the county with the most dereliction is not Lancashire or Glamorgan, but Cornwall.
This has not only the vast excavations of china clay, which litter 30 sq. miles around St. Austell, but also the remains of tin and copper-mining…It is strange to realise the poisonous squalor in the midst of the most romantic landscape in England.
A Cornishman would not like his county to be said to be in England, but these were the words of Lord Robens.
It is hard for many hon. Members to recognise that in parts of Cornwall it is still possible to walk only a few yards off a main road and find an unfenced mine. All Cornish boys and girls, and this includes my own children, are taught

to be careful where they walk, but this does not apply to visitors. It has been said that Aberfan was the first tip disaster, but it is a not infrequent occurrence in Cornwall for a fatality to occur alongside a main road when a young person falls down an unfenced mine shaft. The problem could easily be dealt with were the word "shafts" to be added.
The Minister of Power told me that there were other powers available for dealing with the type of problem I have in mind, but I do not think that he was exactly right. This Bill deals predominantly with safety, and other Acts deal not with safety but with derelict land. The Local Government Act 1966, the Industrial Development Act 1966, and certain parts of the National Parks Act 1949, are directed to the aesthetic or economic improvement of derelict land. As far as I am aware, this Measure is the first we have had dealing specifically with safety, and I want briefly to refer to this existing legislation.
First, under Section 20 of the Industrial Development Act, the Board of Trade has the power, where it is expedient in the Board of Trade's view, to contribute
…to the development of industry in that area…
and take steps
…enabling land to be brought into use or of improving its appearance…?
and also to take action
…if it appears to the Minister that the land is derelict, neglected or unsightly…
That Act applies only to development areas.
In the Local Government Act 1966 we read that where a piece of land is derelict according to the Ministry criteria but does not satisfy the Board of Trade criteria—in other words, the criteria in the Industrial Development Act—a 50 per cent. Revenue grant may in some cases be available under Section 9 of the Act. It is clear that the Local Government Act only empowers the Ministry to give a grant for the rehabilitation of derelict, neglected or unsightly land. In some cases disused shafts fall within the type of site for which such grants are available, but the application is still only to derelict or unsightly land.
Several hon. Members have felt that the scope of the Bill should also cover


amenity and dereliction. I believe that that aspect is covered by the Local Government Act, but that Act does not cover the question of safety, which is what the Bill deals with. The National Parks Act, 1949 gives the Government power to make 75 per cent. capital grants in the National Parks, again for derelict land.
The financial cost of what I seek would be extremely limited—I doubt whether it would be more than £10,000 or £20,000.

Mr. Mason: I know that I was hazy in my reply when the hon. Gentleman intervened. To clear his mind, I should tell him that abandoned mine shafts are dealt with in Section 151 of the 1954 Act, which makes failure securely to fence an abandoned shaft a statutory nuisance under the Public Health Act 1936. That Act is administered by the local authorities.

Mr. Nott: I am very glad that the Minister gave that answer before I completed my speech, because it still does not cover the situation I am trying to describe. I have not fully explained why, and I should now like to do so. There are, I know, powers to impose a statutory penalty on somebody who fails to fence a mine shaft. But the problem in Cornwall, the oldest mining area in the United Kingdom, is that in normal cases ownership of the shafts cannot be traced, because mineral rights have been passed from hand to hand over hundreds of years. This applies to the majority of mine shafts which are alongside main roads, and which are dangers to any person stepping out of a car or having a picnic on the moors.
Therefore, the burden falls on local authorities, since there is nobody else with the responsibility or ownership. The local authorities say that they do not have the revenue or the grants to fence these shafts adequately. If the Government could include in the Bill powers to give a grant to local authorities and require them to fence those shafts where the ownership cannot be traced, we should overcome what is a grave and serious problem in parts of Cornwall.
I hope that the Minister will deal with this point in winding up the debate.

7.52 p.m.

Mr. Alec Jones: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member

for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on his maiden speech. I am sure that his brevity will commend him to both sides of the House, and probably make him a firm favourite with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and those who occupy the Chair.
In common with every hon. Member who has spoken, I welcome the contents of the Bill in the main. At the same time I endorse the sentiments of many hon. Members on both sides of the House who have expressed their concern that derelict land and tips should be reclaimed not only where they are dangerous but from the amenity point of view. This is very important to me, representing as I do a very old industrial area like Rhondda.
It is important to move them for amenity reasons when they are ugly and unsightly, for safety reasons when they are a danger, and because in many cases they become a positive disincentive to industrialists who might otherwise enter the area.
But it is understandable that the Bill should concentrate on the dangerous aspects of certain tips, because it was born out of Aberfan. It is strange to think that until 21st October, 1966, very few people outside South Wales had heard of Aberfan, and many inside South Wales had not heard of it. But now Aberfan is a name known throughout the world because of the dreadful happenings of that day.
The Bill cannot do anything to undo the terror and tragedy of Aberfan, but what it can and should do, and what we shall seek to make it do, is to ensure that future generations do not suffer any repetition of the events of Aberfan. That is what we owe to those children whose lives were snatched away from them, and it is just about all that we can do as human beings, but it places a very heavy responsibility on us. It places a heavy responsibility on the Government and the people who advise them in introducing the Bill; it places a heavy responsibility on the House to see that each Clause is critically examined to ensure that there is no recurrence of Aberfan; and it places a responsibility on the nation to ensure that funds will be made available to implement many of the proposals in the Bill, because at the end of


the day there must emerge a piece of legislation that will enable us to say, "There will be no more Aberfans".
There are two small points on which I should like reassurance. I may be mistaken in my reading of the Bill, and if so I apologise in advance to my right hon. Friend. The Tribunal of Inquiry recommended the establishment of a National Tip Safety Committee. This was suggested by Professor Bishop and his colleagues and endorsed by the National Coal Board. The Committee would advise the Minister in the exercise of his responsibility for the safety and inspection of all tips. It may be that we are to have such a Committee, but, if so, would not it be better to write it into the Bill? The Inquiry Report envisaged a responsible rôle for the Committee to fill. Whilst the present Minister of Power might agree to such a Committee, he will not always be in that office, and it would be such an important body that provision for it should be put into the Bill from the beginning.
Clause 1 talks of requiring the Minister to give general powers to the end that every tip must be made and kept secure. Clause 5 enables the Minister to make regulations requiring mine managers and quarry owners to make "tipping rules". Such rules and regulations about tipping give the Minister tremendous powers and responsibility. In that connection he would be helped by a National Tip Safety Committee, which was provided for in the Bill and was not dependent on the views or feelings of the holder of his office. I hope that he will give us his observations on the matter.
I wish to refer next to the difficulties of local authorities in connection with tips which are still in use. Paragraph 250 of the Report referred to the strong and repeated warnings made to the National Coal Board by the local authority of Merthyr Tydfil and the repeated assurances that all was well which were made by the National Coal Board to the authority. The Tribunal viewed the difficulties of the Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council with considerable sympathy, and produced Recommendation XIV, which says:
A local authority should have access to plans for tipping and reports on existing tips and, if not satisfied with them, should have

a right of appeal to the Minister, who might appoint an independent expert to conduct an examination and make recommendations.
I cannot find this specific type of recommendation in the Bill, and I should like to know my right hon. Friend's views on this. When local people are disturbed or worried about tip stability or possible dangers, which may be real or imagined, they do not go to the Minister first nor to Members of Parliament or the National Coal Board. The first people they go to see are the local councillors, who are the first in the firing line for all such complaints. Therefore, it is reasonable that Recommendation XIV should be implemented, so that the local authorities not only have access to tipping plans and reports but have the right of direct appeal to the Minister.
Those are the only two points on which I want extra information. It has already been said that there is no political or other opposition to the Bill. We all want it, and we all want it quickly, but, more important, we all want it to do its job. We should be in some danger if we allowed it to go through without subjecting it to the most critical examination so that we really make sure that the Government, House of Commons and nation have really learned the lesson of Aberfan.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. Jasper More: I am particularly pleased to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones), because it seems to me that he is the first speaker in the debate to put his finger on some of the points in the Bill which are not perhaps altogether good.
In saying that, I want to make clear that I welcome the Bill. I think it right to say that it springs from a deep-seated national resolve that we shall never again experience such a tragedy as Aberfan. I am not one who would say that we can necessarily cure everything by legislation, but if we are to have legislation it is our responsibility to ensure that it is as good and effective as it can be. It is on this aspect that I have doubts about the Bill in its present form.
I was disturbed by a number of things said by the Minister. To begin with, he drew a distinction between tips which derive from mining and those which derive from industrial processes. I come


from a constituency which claims to include the oldest industrial area in England, and we have many of the old tips mentioned in the debate. It would often need an expert to say what their origin was. We also have the problem referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) in that the ownership of many of the tips is unknown. It does not seem to me that all these situations have been provided for in the Bill. It does not seem important in a matter of this kind to make these subtle distinctions between the origins of potentially dangerous tips.
Surely, if the Bill is to be effective it must do two things. First, it must impose, without any doubt or qualification, the duties and responsibilities considered necessary to avoid a disaster of the kind in our minds. Secondly, it must make sufficient financial provision for what may need to be done.
The Bill contains 38 Clauses and 4 Schedules, and in almost every Clause after Clause 1 we find powers given to local authorities and elaborate rules laid down as to who must pay—whether an owner is to be liable, whether a local authority is to be liable, whether somebody else is to be liable—and all sorts of bureaucratic provisions for regulating all these situations. It seems to me that in the labyrinth of the Bill the essential point is lost that if we are to avoid this kind of tragedy there must be clearly defined responsibilities and we must clearly define who is to do what.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) suggested that often it was the local council rather than the county council which had the most intimate knowledge of these things and might have the primary responsibility. I am a county council member and would be the first to agree that it is not easy for a body as large as a county council to have immediate and intimate knowledge of all the tips in its area. But wherever liability is imposed, it ought to be clearly imposed. I should be grateful if the Secretary of State for Wales would tell me whether he is satisfied that the point is covered by the Bill. Do the county councils, which I gather are the bodies upon which the ultimate responsibility is now to be laid, have the necessary technical knowledge, and can they be expected to have it, to keep themselves informed

about potential dangers? If they have not the necessary technical knowledge, surely it ought to be the duty of the Minister, through his experts, to keep his Ministry informed about potential dangers and have power to serve on the responsible local authority mandatory instructions about what needs to be done. If we do not provide that by legislation, it seems to me that the responsibilities will not be defined and that things will simply be allowed to carry on.
I speak with some concern on this subject because in my constituency I had about five years ago, in connection with my county council, to investigate the situation of a very ancient tip that was considered to be potentially dangerous. It was estimated that if an emergency occurred the cost of the immediate remedial works to prevent a disaster would run into six figures and that the cost of a final job might easily run into seven figures. When faced with liabilities of that kind, any local authority can be excused for not wishing to rush into remedial works which would impose such liabilities on the rates.
This brings me to the second point which is not adequately dealt with in the Bill, and that is financial provision and allocation. If it is true that the Bill is the result of a deep-seated national resolve to ensure that such tragedies do not happen again, surely we do not just leave it for the Caerphilly, Aberdare or Merthyr Tydfil local authorities to make the financial provision. Surely it should be a national matter and we as Members of Parliament should be able to say to the taxpayers, "We look to the whole body of taxpayers and consider ourselves justified in asking you to meet the provision to ensure that such a situation does not happen anywhere else in the country."
But when one looks at the Bill—this is all that I have been able to find—one finds that Clause 25, dealing with finance, simply says that where local authorities have incurred expenditure the Minister may make grants. What encouragement is that to a local authority to deal with a situation in its area? I appeal to the Minister seriously to consider putting much greater strength into the Bill. It would be deplorable if the Bill were to leave us—a considerable document as it is—primarily an enabling Bill or a window-dressing Bill and one


which is not adequate even to lay down the responsibilities and the financial provisions which may be essential for preventing another such disaster.

8.8 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: I apologise to the Minister of Power for not having been present when he made his opening speech in the debate. I had to be elsewhere in the House. I wish to participate in the debate because the subject is of great importance to my constituency and one to which I think it right that we should give detailed consideration.
I have very considerable sympathy with many of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More). I think that when we come to the Committee stage we shall have to examine these points most carefully, in particular the financial provision, already mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), taking into account the difficulties with which local authorities have to contend in Wales in other respects and also the difficulties with which they have to contend at this particular moment.
I would point out to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales that this is particularly so in the next two or three years, when we are awaiting decisions on local government. Many of us wish to see these decisions carried through with the utmost speed so that the responsibilities may be absolutely clear. But in such circumstances it is particularly necessary that we should ensure that the local authorities have the maximum incentive to do the work.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare illustrated very well, there is a disincentive in a sense for them to do the work. It is not sufficient to say that the local authority ought to have the paramount interest in doing the work. If it has not got the full powers and financial backing to do it, it is not easy for it to embark on the work. We must try and clear up that matter in the Bill.
But, even more important in a sense, we must clear up the question of dividend responsibility which still remains. I therefore ask the Government—and I think they will be agreeable to the request—for an extensive Committee

stage in which we can look very carefully at all these matters.
As a Member of Parliament having to deal with some of these problems after the Aberfan disaster, I must confess that they presented the most difficult problems I have ever had to deal with as an M.P. Of course, in my constituency the effect of Aberfan was bound to be considerable. We have a tip at Cwm. A school stands in a very narrow valley underneath the tip, which is still being operated. If there had been a slide of the tip, the school would have been in jeopardy, It was natural that the people of Cwm should have been extremely alarmed by the situation. The councillors and M.P.s concerned have had an extremely difficult situation to deal with. We have had to steer a course between dangerous complacency and the creation of alarm.
I have the utmost sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. S. O. Davies) in the difficulties he has had to contend with. He has, of course, dealt with them with great determination and skill, and the people of Aberfan and of Merthyr Tydvil owe a great debt to him for the way in which he has dealt with the problem. I say that as his neighbour.
I do not think that anyone outside can dogmatise about the way these problems can be dealt with. In my constituency, we still have a situation, to some degree, in which many mothers have kept their children from school because they would not be assured that absolute safety was provided. It was a very delicate matter to deal with. We had at least seven or eight meetings in Cwm in order to discuss the question and to provide the guarantees for which the mothers asked and to ensure that immediate steps were taken to provide for the safety of the tip while, at the same time, trying to allay the natural alarm which had arisen. It was an exceedingly difficult problem.
One of my main reasons for speaking is that I wish to pay tribute to the way in which the National Coal Board has dealt with this matter. It has had a rough time in many other places and many of the criticisms made of it are legitimate. In the Aberfan Report, many of the criticisms were well-founded. The Report critised the way in which the Board made its appearance before the Tribunal. I do


not mitigate these criticisms. They stand on the record.
But, having said that, it is only fair to add that, from my experience since Aberfan is in my constituency, the Board has dealt with the problem with great efficiency, determination and care. I say that partly because of what the Board has done, partly because of the persistence of its efforts and partly because I have talked to the officials responsible. I have found them to be dedicated people who have worked night and day to try and ensure the safety of my constituents. It is, therefore, only proper to pay tribute to them.
As I have said, we have held meetings in Cwm to discuss the problem and I hope that those meetings were effective. I believe that the only way to have dealt with the matter was for officials of the Board to come and explain, in detail, technically, what had been done and what their opinion was. First-rate officials came from the Board. They explained the technical difficulties. Many of them were so technical that they could not be understood by ordinary people—they certainly could not be understood by me. Nevertheless, the officials explained in detail and they came at a critical moment.
One of the mothers who had withheld her children from the school—and I think she had every natural reason for doing so and one can understand her feelings—said, "I have heard all the technical explanations but my question is simply this: is it safe to send my children to the school?" If there had been any hesitation in the answer of the official, the alarm spread throughout Cwm would have been disastrous. But he answered straightly and coolly. He gave the fair and clear answer, "Yes. It is safe to send your children to the school." That was an answer given responsibly by people who had worked night and day to ensure that the tip should only be worked if it was safe.
Personally, I owe a great debt to the officials of the Board and I acknowledge it. I think, too, that the Ministry of Power should receive acknowledgement for its assistance. Of course, it is the duty of the Ministry to deal with such matters efficiently, but it should be stated that it has been efficient. There has been no neglect on its part. It has dealt properly with an extremely difficult task.
I re-emphasise what has been said about the inadequacies of the Bill. Of course, we want the Bill, but we also want some of its deficiencies to be examined during its passage through the House. We also want further measures beyond it to deal with other questions of amenities in the valleys.
Here again, I do not wish to depreciate what has already been done in my constituency. Reclamation work has been undertaken in recent months which can be of great advantage to us. I am eager to give thanks for what has been achieved in this respect. We have now started really to get a move on with the problem, so I am not making this speech in a spirit of carping criticism. We still have a lot more to do, however.
I was interested, also, to read the statement by Lord Robens the other day on these matters, and of how he thinks that the whole question of amenities in the valleys should be dealt with on a more extensive scale than is the case, perhaps, in the Bill. We should examine his proposals with the utmost care to see whether we can go forward along those lines as well. At any rate, let us consider whether his proposals are better than the Government's. Let us look at them fairly and discuss them fully.
Wales has been most unfairly treated in this sense compared with the rest of the country—or at least we have not yet had our fair deal. I was brought up in Cornwall, whose problems were described by the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott). I am all in favour of assisting Cornwall through the Bill as well as Wales. I spent much of my youth wandering around the mineshafts at Kit Hill and nearly fell into one or two. Perhaps some people wish that I had done. But that is no excuse for not blocking them up. Cornwall's industrial position was built on mining, but anyone comparing Cornwall and Wales can see that, in Wales, the problem is far bigger, and we have every right to demand that there shall be a 100 per cent. national response.
This is one of the main demands we are trying to press and it should be the aim, in a measurable period—over the next ten years, as Lord Robens has indicated—to clear up this mess. Of course, we may not be able to make the valleys as beautiful as they were before, although


the valleys are incomparably beautiful even as they are. But if we can carry through this work in the next ten years, making it clear that this is what we intend to do and that nothing will stop us, I think that we shall have achieved something of which we can all be proud.
We can do so while we have to deal with these dilemmas. Do not let anybody think that the dilemmas are not very great. In Cwm itself there is the dilemma which in a sense was to be found in Aberfan. It is that the people in Cwm want to see the tip made safe, but they also want the pit to be working, and it is no good telling them that one problem can be solved at the expense of the other. Do not let it be imagined that these problems are easy to solve.
Whatever may be said by some hon. Members opposite, for generations nobody cared very much about the desecration carried on in Wales. Nobody could go through those valleys and say that some regard was paid to their desecration. But now there is an entirely different approach. The Bill is one part, but I want to see the rest of the programme developing. I wish the Secretary of State the greatest success in carrying it through as speedily as possible and making it clear to the people of Wales that we are determined to do this job thoroughly.

8.21 p.m.

Mr. Frank Hooley: Before coming to the content of the Bill, I should like to add my compliments and congratulations to those already paid to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on his maiden speech. He is not only the Member for a constituency not far from mine, but he is a personal friend and colleague in Sheffield, where he is well known for his cogent and forceful contributions to debates on public matters there, and I am sure that he will have much to contribute to our debates.
The trend of the debate has been almost uniform, namely, a welcome for the Bill, but suggestions that it is much too narrowly drawn and fails to cover matters which it might well have covered. I particularly welcome the speech of

my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) and the cogent comments of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) on the problems of amenity and questions of dereliction, points which have been made by some of my hon. Friends.
It has been said that 150,000 acres of land are derelict for one reason or another. I have seen it suggested that the figure is 99,000 acres, but the difference may be due to the difference between the United Kingdom as a whole and England and Wales. What may not be generally known is that 3,500 acres a year are being used up by new industrial tipping and that the problem is expanding rather than diminishing. Figures given to me by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government as recently as 1964 and 1965 show that only 2, 000 acres a year are being reclaimed. In other words, we are losing the race.
I am, naturally, particularly concerned with the area to which my constituency is adjacent. My constituency lies on the edge of the greatest and richest coalfield in England, the South Yorkshire coalfield. In Yorkshire and Humberside generally there are 10, 000 acres of derelict land and it is estimated that 200 acres are laid waste each year by colliery spoil and mineral waste. From an answer to a recent Question I discovered that in 1967–68 only 105 acres were reclaimed. In that area, too, far from making good any of the dereliction of 150 years, we are still losing out on the current rate of dereliction, and a great deal of it is due to mineral and coal waste.
Several hon. Members have pointed out that there are forms of waste other than tipping from collieries, quarries and mines. There is also the problem of chemical waste and that of the disposal of pulverised ash from power stations. In a report of the Yorkshire and Humberside Planning Council it was pointed out that one power station produces annually 100,000 tons of pulverised ash, which has to be disposed of somehow. I know that the Electricity Council is doing a great deal of scientific and technological research into using this waste as a raw material, but I understand that not all of it can be so used and there is bound to


be some overspill which has to be disposed of and which creates a serious tipping problem. The Report of the Planning Council refers to the
stultifying effect of large tracts of derelict land falling especially heavily on the small communities of the Yorkshire coalfied.
The remedy proposed in the Bill for the specific problem of tips and waste from collieries is to lay additional burdens and responsibilities on local authorities. I have grave reservations about that, reservations which have been voiced by many hon. Members. First, do these authorities dispose of the necessary technical expertise to deal with this problem? This is not a matter of fault or blame, but simply a fact. Do local authorities have the technical advice readily available to enable them to make safe, or otherwise deal with, tips and spoil heaps? Other hon. Members have dealt with the financial problem and I shall not go into that because to some extent it is part of the whole question of the financing of local authorities.
Another problem is the physical and geographical problem. The best solution to the disposing of a particular spoil heap or a particular form of waste may be to use it to fill up or blot out some quarry or hole in the ground elsewhere, but if that hole in the ground does not happen to be in the same local authority area, there is probably nothing the authority can do about it. What is needed is not a process of clearing up or making safe on a local basis, but something on a much wider basis.
There is also the problem of the political will and energy to do it. The figures which I have quoted for the failure to keep up with the pace of existing dereliction demonstrate that for one reason or another—and I am not prepared to say what reason—local authorities do not have sufficient energy or drive, or perhaps not enough money—and it may be as simple as that—to deal with the problem of spoil heaps, waste and dereliction. All the evidence and records make it seem unlikely that they will deal with the problem successfully.
It may be a little unkind to say so, but there is evidence that some local authorities are contributing to the problem, as is shown in a special study of derelict land which was commissioned by the Yorkshire and Humberside Planning Council.

Speaking about domestic and industrial waste, the Report said:
The responsibility for disposal is widely dispersed among the various local authorites and individual firms, and the siting of numerous small tips has been determined more by casual factors of ownership or availability than by the suitability of the site for tipping. The result is to spread dereliction and unsightliness where a rational approach to the problem would enable such waste to be used constructively for the elimination of existing pockets of dereliction.
That may be a special case, but it demonstrates the limits of strictly local effort to deal with the problem of dereliction caused by spoil-heaps and tipping.
A conference of local planning authorities in the Yorkshire and Humberside area, in April of this year, admitted that this was a national rather than a local problem. To some extent the Government have accepted that this is a national problem by the awarding of special grants, of 50 per cent. or 85 per cent. for clearing up industrial dereliction. What worries me about the Bill is that it seems to be extremely narrowly drawn in terms of the danger which it seeks to combat.
It particularly defines stability, but there are other dangers from tips, dangers to health, dangers from vermin and from dust. The Minister may say that these dangers are already covered under existing legislation, but I wonder whether this piecemeal approach is sensible.
I want to draw attention to the lines along which remedies might be found. We already possess two national agencies which might be used to supplement or perhaps replace the efforts of local authorities. The first is the Land Commission, which could be used to acquire derelict areas or massive spoil heaps. If a local authority did not have the resources to gain financial control of these areas, the Land Commission could be asked to acquire them with a view to clearing them up.
The second agency is the Open-Cast Executive of the Coal Board. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale has referred to the possibility of using the Coal Board. The organisation in the country with the greatest expertise in the reclamation of derelict land is the Open-Cast Executive, which has been spending £1 million a year on the reclamation of land over the past few years, and since 1953 has


cleared up no less than 83,000 acres, something close on the total I quoted earlier of outstanding dereliction in the previous century.
I believe that it should be possible, within the Bill, to make use of these agencies to clear up, or stabilise, or to make some real impact on this appalling problem of industrial dereliction with which we have been faced as a result of centuries of neglect, and which has been brought to our minds, forced upon us, in such a stark and vivid way by the terrible tragedy at Aberfan.

8.32 p.m.

Mr. Alex Eadie: I begin by apologising to my right hon. Friend for not being here during his speech, but other activities made it impossible. I represent a mining constituency and one cannot help but realise how important this question is. The Bill deals primarily with the safety of tips. However, we are not only dealing with tips; we are dealing with the whole question of amenity. While it has been brought out that there are various Acts enabling local authorities to deal with the problem, to some extent it is also clear that the situation will be a little lopsided if we have a Measure designed to deal primarily with the safety aspect, which does not correlate other questions to do with bings or tips.
I hope that in Committee it will be possible to examine this problem to see if there is a way of correlating these subjects of amenity and safety. Spoliation and dangers to health have been referred to. In my area, for years the method of tipping the Redd and the stone from the mines was to dump it into the sea. Now an area of six miles which, when I was a boy was a lovely golden beach, where we used to swim and play, has been spoiled. In the 1921 strike, the miners hewed with their own hands a swimming pool on this stretch. But because of tipping into the sea that beach is completely destroyed. There is no sign of it for five or six miles.
This creates terrible problems for local authorities in the area. This was the murder of an amenity. It would cost millions of pounds if we had to reclaim this area. An area of great beauty has been destroyed. Problems of sewage

and health were created. We do not want now to argue about why this was done, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) pointed out, for many years we had in this country people who did not care about how other people lived. In my constituency, I have tips which are caused not only by coal mining but by shale mining. Largely because they are present, there is a depressing atmosphere throughout an area which has suffered from the contraction of the coal mining and shale industries.
I wish that it were possible that we could have provided in the Bill for some form of national agency which would be responsible, not only for ensuring that tips were safe, but, in many cases, for trying to take them away altogether. I am aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has done magnificent work in getting rid of bings in many areas and trying to create better living and amenity conditions. But the problem is gigantic, and we must start trying to solve it.
I have had experience as a housing chairman of trying to obtain a building site in a mining area. The only place which we could find was a bing. We proposed to get rid of the bing and to build 80 or 100 houses on the site. The bing belonged not to the Coal Board, but to private enterprise. When we negotiated with the private owner, he suddenly found that he had something valuable; he had an asset. I do not wish to go into the question of the planning Acts, but it was hon. Members opposite who altered the legislation to ensure that land value was based on the current market value rather than the existing use value.
I do not know what the cost of land on which a bing was situated would be if it were based on existing use value, but the county council had to pay the owner the existing market value for the land, and we had to remove the bing. To our chagrin, we had to pay for the refuse which we removed. This was absurd. This is why we need some form of national agency to deal with these matters. It is wise that the Coal Board is not mentioned in the Bill. One hon. Member opposite said that in some cases it will not be possible to trace the owners.


I realise that. But we must put it to the taxpayers that this issue must be faced.
I welcome the safety provisions in the Bill. Thank goodness, we do not have in Scotland problems such as those of Aberfan, although there is one bing in my constituency which causes me concern. We sympathise with Aberfan in its problems, which sparked off the introduction of the Bill. But, having taken care of the safety aspects, I hope that in Committee hon. Members will look at the wider problems of amenity to make sure that the tips and quarries are obliterated so as to give the people in the mining areas much better amenities and a better way of life. I warmly approve the principle of the Bill.

8.41 p.m.

Mr. Peter Emery: May I start, as I am certain the whole House would wish me to start, by congratulating the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on his maiden speech. Few hon. Members can be as fortunate as he was in finding a subject which gave so natural an opportunity for him to make a maiden speech so early in his Parliamentary life. He exploited his opportunity very ably, and, with no suggestion of condescension, may I praise the pleasant manner in which he addressed us. Modesty is one of the characteristics which is universally welcomed in the House. There is no doubt that he showed in his speech exactly those qualities which the House welcomes. May I pay my tribute, too, to Mr. Fred Bellenger, whose place the hon. Member has taken. Many of us remember working with him over the years and recognise the work which he did not only for his constituency but for the House.
On this side of the House we have the greatest sympathy and regard for the people of Aberfan and in no way do we wish to belittle the tragedy which has befallen them. But this is not just a Bill concerned with Aberfan. It goes much wider than Wales. We are attempting to legislate to ensure good management and safety. It therefore follows that the Bill has been welcomed by all sides of the House.
I wish to refer, in particular, to the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Fylde (Colonel Lancaster), who has a lifetime of experience

in these matters. I hope that we shall be able to draw on his knowledgee in the later stages of the Bill. The entire House would benefit from that. The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) set the right tone for the debate and was no doubt welcomed by all sides of the House.
I have an immediate criticism to make of the Bill. The Minister of Power claimed some credit—and, indeed, all credit is due to him—for his work as a back-bench Member in endeavouring to improve the amenities in pit areas. He will not, therefore, be surprised when I say that we are particularly disappointed that some of the amenity aspects concerning tips have been omitted from the Bill. It would have been easy for the Minister to include them. We were promised the Bill in the last week of October over 12 months ago, so that the Government cannot claim that there has not been time to consider these matters.
May I add my comment, following some of the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones) and Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley), when they were considering the factors involved in tip dispersal. It is not only in respect of amenity that this is important to the country. There are thousands and thousands of acres occupied by these tips. Even if only a small section of these could be properly dispersed that would add considerably not only to land use but to land values, and even of land owned by public authorities. One looks, for example, at some in Stoke or elsewhere in the Black Country, where there is engineering ability to disperse the tips. We should look, when in Committee on the Bill, into the possibilities of being able to cope specifically with that type of problem.
I am worried about the need under the Bill for technical and engineering specialist knowledge on such subjects as mining, geology, soil and the removal of soil. Specialisations which are the particular responsibility of the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate will not be found with the local authorities, and yet under Part II local authorities are specifically given powers to take action. In no way am I attempting to criticise either county councils or other local authorities, but, after all, no local engineer has ever had


to consider some of the engineering problems which this Bill will place, as a responsibility, on the smaller local authorities.
Obviously, when there is an emergency everything else must be swept to one side, but where remedial action is required by a local authority I consider that the views of the Inspectors of Mines and Quarries should be obtained. What I have in mind as a suggestion is that, before the service of any notice under Part II by a local authority for remedial action, or before any action is taken on remedial work by or on behalf of a local authority, the local authority should obtain the agreement of the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries to the specific work in question. This would provide a single controlling factor on behalf of the Government.
I believe this makes sense. It would be most acceptable to industry, which is, obviously, concerned, and has close contacts with the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries. It would also be a sensible and efficient way of making the best use of resources. No doubt, it would cut down wasteful expenditure which might arise if a number of local authorities had to get specialist evidence or had to go to consultants. Moreover, it would allow a local authority to continue to be able to obtain the help of the Inspectorate with exploratory testing. I know that this is a view which is taken by many of the quarrying interests, because they feel that it would allow the continuation of the sort of control they have been used to. It would go some way to meeting the point made by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. S. O. Davies) when he said that we should not place much responsibility on soil mechanics or engineers. I am certain he would go along with placing responsibility on the Inspectors of Mines and Quarries, for whom all of us have a considerable amount of praise.
I turn to the grants. Many hon. Members have felt particularly concerned about this. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) and the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) stressed it particularly. Clause 25 says:
Where remedial operations are being or have been carried out in relation to a disused

tip by a local authority, the appropriate Minister may "—
I stress that "may"—
with the consent of the Treasury, make grants to the local authority…
and so on. I suggest to the Minister that he could meet the wishes of all hon. Members by using the words "the Minister will", not "may"—"the Minister will make grants". This is the obvious and natural way to do away with the doubt and consternation which has been shown today by many hon. Members. It would also meet the wish of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) that there should be no disincentive to local authorities to act. The Bill then would be not just an enabling Bill, it would be a Bill to ensure action.
May I again be slightly critical and ride my hobby horse? It seems to me that the Bill enhances the mystique and language of the civil servant, the lawyer and the Parliamentary draftsmen. It endorses the approach that, wherever possible, we must say in the most complicated jargon what could be said without difficulty in plain English.
May I read Clause 3(1):
It shall be the duty of the owner and of the manager of every mine and of the owner of every quarry to take such steps as may be necessary for securing that he is at all material times in possession of all information relevant for determining the nature and extent of any steps which it is requisite for him to take in order to discharge efficiently the duties imposed on him by or by virtue of this Part of this Act.
How much more simple to say:
Every owner or manager of every mine or quarry always shall have available the information necessary to meet his duties under Part I of this Act.
That is 22 words instead of 82, but perhaps that is asking too much and is interfering with restrictive practices with which the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery is concerned.

Mr. Hooson: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. He must recognise that these words follow a certain Section of the 1954 Act, and have already been legally interpreted. Because they have been legally interpreted in a certain way it is much easier to follow the same words.

An Hon. Member: Withdraw.

Mr. Emery: I have been asked to withdraw. Perhaps the hon. Members on the Front Bench will listen to what I have to say. I went to great trouble with legal friends of mine to ensure that these words, as such, had no legal interpretation at the moment and, therefore, there is no reason whatsoever why they should stand in that form.

Mr. Hooson: Section 48(2) of the 1954 Act.

Mr. Emery: I am surprised that that suggestion should be made.
May I ask a question concerning the leaving out of the duties of the quarry manager? In that Clause, and it was that Clause to which I referred specifically, the quarry manager does not have the same responsibilities and duties as the manager of every mine. Reference is made to the owner and manager of every mine, but not to the owner of every quarry. When I was investigating this with my legal friends, in order to back up what I said earlier, I was informed that there is no legal reason in this sense why the quarry manager should have been left out. I was told by quarry managers earlier today that they feel that the information relevant should be something with which they have to deal. Therefore, I wanted to enlarge upon it specfically because it struck me as a matter of principle with which we should deal.
I make the point jovially that it would appear that the Minister needs power in the Bill personally and unaided to move mountains. That has not happened since the days of Allah. In Clause 2(3)(b), he has power to say that a tip is not a tip. it would appear to refer to a tip which is not an active or closed tip. Therefore, if it is taken out of this part of the Bill and made a disused tip, which is not a tip for the purposes of Part I, presumably it becomes a tip for the purposes of Part II. This is quite important for the interpretation of action which we might wish to take in Committee, and it would be helpful to have some explanation of it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) and my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) are concerned with the dangers of open quarries, chalk in the case of Canterbury, and the greater safety of disused mineshafts

on derelict land in Cornwall. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives was answered twice, but he stressed that his point was not covered by the 1954 Act, and that is so particularly when the owner cannot be traced. If the Bill deals so definitely with matters of safety and can be extended to cover that subject, we may be able to take up an extra point.
I am very much concerned, as a matter of principle, that the right of entry in anything other than an emergency in Clause 18 should not be on the basis of a mere 24 hours' notice. That is an unnecessarily short period of notice, especially when one remembers that notice can be served by post. After certain debates in the House this week, it may be that the notice would not arrive before the inspector or other person wishing to enter.
The power of entry in an emergency is absolute, and we support that completely. However, as a matter of principle, any entry after the service of notice should be made in co-operation with the owner. I would have thought that a period of notice of seven days or, at any rate, 72 hours should be substituted.
Then, why is natural settlement, in Part II of the Bill, not dealt with in Part I? We have specific references to it in Clause 36, but it must be a matter of great concern in any judgment on the stability of a pit. As specific reference is made to it in Part II, I cannot understand why it is left out of Part I.
Certain people are concerned lest there is need to redefine legally the word "refuse". As I understand it, from the quarrying point of view, according to the present Ministry interpretation, overburden in opencast operations is not regarded as refuse. However, because of the responsibility for refuse set out in the Bill, the High Court definition of 1890 will not be adequate. This is a matter of concern to a number of people, and I give notice that we may have to reconsider that point.
Referring to the speech of the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), I think that we all fully understand his worry about the movement of tips in his constituency. It seems, therefore, that this is the basis for all of us wishing to hurry the Bill along.
Finally, why in the Bill should the local authority have the power to act except as a matter of emergency—and we take the matter of emergency as always being primary—before the owner has been given the right to put his own house in order?
Clause 14, affected by Clause 17(1), seems to give the local authority the option of either requiring the owner to act or to act itself and then obtain reimbursement. If there is to be this option, I do not see why it should be this way round. I accept that in many instances it is impossible to trace the owner. If that happens, 21 days after the service of a notice the power automatically reverts to the local authority. Therefore, if there is to be an option, particularly when the grant factor is taken into consideration, it should first be given to the owner. He should not have to accept that his house must be put in order by the local authority and that he cannot do it himself. This seems a major point of principle. There may be a simple answer, but I was unable to find it. I raise the matter for that reason.
The debate has clearly shown that there is no opposition in principle to the Bill, but it is quite evident that it needs considerable amendment and improvement. In nearly every speech from both sides of the House some form of improvement has been suggested. We wish to see further amenity considerations brought into the Bill. In Committee we should like to have further consideration given to tip dispersal. We should like to define the obligation and make mandatory the fact that grants will be given to local authorities. We will try to deal with these matters by moving the necessary amendments in Committee. In the meantime, we are delighted that the Bill should proceed as quickly as possible.

9.3 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. George Thomas): I join with the hon. Member for Honiton (Mr. Emery) and with others who have spoken in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on his maiden speech which we were privileged to hear tonight. It is always a great day in the life of any hon. Member when he first addresses this honourable House, and my

hon. Friend acquitted himself with distinction. I know that we all look forward to hearing his sound common sense again. I am glad that he is sitting on this side.
The debate has covered a great deal of ground and in many ways it has been very moving. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Power was a Yorkshire miner before coming to the House. I am the son of a Rhondda Valley miner and I lived for years under the shadow of a mighty tip in Trealaw, Rhondda.
I therefore feel that it is fitting that those who have their associations with the mining industry should be associated with getting this Measure through the House, or at least with introducing it for its Second Reading tonight. At the time of the Aberfan disaster, apart from our grief and horror at the entire tragedy, everyone involved had one vow on their lips, "This shall never happen again", and tonight the House takes a major step to ensure that that vow is honoured.
I am deeply grateful to the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) for his personal references to me earlier in the debate. When I listened to my hon. Friends from Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies), Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans), and Aberdare (Mr. Probert), I was very deeply moved. No one can cast his mind back without feeling sick at the experience those people endured, and which everyone with feeling shared.
I believe that all people who live in the shadow of tips have a right to expect this House to give them security in their homes. It seems incredible, but it is true, as the hon. Member reminded us earlier, that the Report pointed out that there was no legislation on the safety of tips.
This Measure is the first legislation directed to securing the safety of our people against the movement of any tip in the land. It was a shock for me to learn, when that Report came out, that there had been no legislation dealing with the safety of tips, except in West Germany and South Africa. Except in some details, and in the use of some alternative means to secure the same ends, the proposals of the Tribunal of Inquiry have either already been accepted and put into operation or are covered by the Bill.
I shall seek briefly to answer some of the main points which have been raised


before I turn to the South Wales coalfield, where, obviously, we have special problems.
The question of amenity has been raised by many hon. Members on both sides of the House. Everyone who knows the valleys of South Wales, or the other local coal mining areas of the country, wants to see the tips removed and derelict land cleared, but I think that tonight the House has under-estimated the powers which already exist for dealing with amenity and derelict land. The Derelict Land Unit, in the Welsh Office, has already approached 70 local authorities to seek to stir them into effort on the clearance of derelict land. The authorities have become enthusiastic, and the grants are generous. At the moment, grants of 85 per cent. are being received by those local authorities which have embarked on the clearance of derelict areas.
The House must remember that this Measure is the answer to the Aberfan Inquiry, and is directly solely to the question of safety. I do not deny that other questions which have been asked are important, but we are here concerned with honouring our word about the safety of the tips, or rather the safety of the people who live in the shadow of them.
I was asked why the managers of quarries, as well as the owners, were not involved in the Measure. Both Opposition Front Bench spokesmen drew attention to this point. I understand that under the 1954 Act there is one manager of a mine, and he has to have statutory qualifications. The management of quarries is different. A quarry manager does not at present need qualifications; indeed, there may be more than one manager, and the quarry owner has power to exclude matters from a manager's control. Jurisdiction is, therefore, divided in that field. Since Part I extends and is to be read with the 1954 Act it is consistent with the earlier Act, which places responsibility for quarries mainly on the owners. No doubt that matter can be pursued further if hon. Members still have their doubts.
The South Wales coal mines are situated in more mountainous country than is any other coalfield in Britain, and many of our tips are piled on steep hillsides. Part II of the Bill is based largely on our experiences in Wales since the

disaster, for we have naturally been actively engaged in providing adequate safeguard measures. Welsh local authorities, at the request of the Government, have inspected pit heaps not owned or operated by the Coal Board, and their priority has been to identify any which might prove a threat to life or property.
In a number of instances they drew the Government's attention to tips that might prove to be dangerous, but as these tips were mainly in the ownership of the Coal Board, in accordance with the Tribunal recommendations we left the Board to take the necessary action.
I join with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), whom I was glad to hear pay tribute to what the Coal Board has done since the disaster. Heaven knows, there was a terrible indictment of the Board at the Tribunal. But we all ought to acknowledge that since that terrible disaster nobody could have done more, or shown more eagerness, than the Board has to see that it is never repeated. Since the moment of the disaster it has been all out to ensure that every possible safeguard for its tips is provided.
My Department, which, under my predecessor, set up the Derelict Land Unit soon after the disaster, has worked in close co-operation with local authorities and the Coal Board. I am glad to be able to tell the House that the vigorous and widespread activity of the unit has not brought to us instances of potential danger on a considerable scale. The main stimulus for clearing tips—which we have been doing—has been the desire to remove ugliness and provide sites for industrial, housing and amenity purposes. Only in two instances dealt with by the unit has the threat of potential danger been a significant factor in what was done. These were the Gelliceidrim Colliery tip, in Cwmamman, and the Graig Ddu tip, in the Rhondda.
Because of the element of potential danger the Gelliceidrim tip was made the first priority of our newly-formed Derelict Land Unit. The work done by the Cwmamman Urban District Council, with the help of the unit, has pushed back the black heaps from the vicinity of the houses which they had overshadowed for decades.
The House will be interested to know also of the action which is being taken about two closed tips—that is, tips no longer used but which are linked with collieries that have not been abandoned. The Lewis Merthyr tip at Trehafod, Rhondda, and the Spion Kop tip at Cefn Brithdir, near Bargoed, are both immense and ugly tips standing on or above steep mountain slopes over buildings. Neither of these tips gave any specific evidence of instability, but the local authorities concerned, in co-operation with the Derelict Land Unit and the Coal Board, have promoted schemes under which the coal recovery firm working on the tips will take the discarded shale further away to a flat site on the mountain top out of sight of the villages.

Mr. Hooley: I can well understand my right hon. Friend's deep and immediate concern with Wales, but the Bill applies also to England and Scotland. Does any body which is comparable to the Derelict Land Unit at the Welsh Office exist for England or Scotland?

Mr. Thomas: I am pleased to assure my hon. Friend that, through the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, local authorities in England are active. If they are not active in my hon. Friend's area, I suggest that he calls upon them.
Disused tips are scattered in their thousands in mining areas. Under the Bill local authorities will have powers to ensure that none becomes dangerous. I must give examples from South Wales because South Wales has a more dangerous problem than has any other part of the United Kingdom. That is why the Bill has become necessary. Our experience in South Wales has provided only one instance of a disused tip, and that not in the ownership of the Coal Board, which has shown serious instability since the Aberfan disaster. That was the tip referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare; the privately-owned Craig y Duffryn tip in the Mountain Ash urban district. It rests on the slopes of the other side of the ridge which separates the Taff Valley and Aberfan from the next Valley. Movement in this tip early in 1967 caused much anxiety, and remedial action was undertaken. In the context of Part II of the Bill, Craig y Duffryn is a classic case.
A detailed survey undertaken by the Coal Board since the disaster has shown that in the United Kingdom there are about 2,000 colliery tips owned by the Board—between 400 and 500 active, and the rest closed or disused tips. In Wales, the Board owns about 100 active colliery tips and about 400 others. There are nearly 200 more disused tips not owned by the Board. The Board has identified those of its tips which could constitute a danger to the public if a slide occurred, and is systematically investigating them with the help of consultants, and, of course, putting remedial work in hand where necessary.
The hon. Member for Hereford asked me to bring the House up to date about the Aberfan tips. It may not be generally known that the Coal Board has done a very great deal from the time of the disaster onwards, and at considerable cost, to ensure the stability of the complex of seven tips built up in successsion on the hill side above Aberfan.
There were seven tips there. The disaster tip No. 7 was virtually removed in the months after the disaster. The area of hillside over which the avalanche poured was cleaned up and sewn with grass. The tops of the uppermost tips, Nos. 4 and 5, have been removed more recently, and much of their dominating appearance has gone. Anyone now travelling up past Aberfan sees the difference. Drains have been laid and maintained, though some of these were inevitably of a temporary character. They had to be put in whilst a final scheme for the complex remained uncertain.
The Coal Board and the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries have been fully satisfied from an early stage in the progress of these extensive works that the tips no longer constitute a danger to people in the village, although they might, until final works are completed, cause nuisances and, not surprisingly in this tragic village, anxieties. They may not constitute a physical danger, but I know from my contacts with the people of Aberfan that they constitute a pyschological, emotional danger.
I announced at the end of July that the Government and the Coal Board had decided to remove the material in the complex to the flat top of the mountain at a cost then estimated to be about £1 million. The effect will be to produce


a hillside landscape showing no sign that tips ever stood there and so to remove, as far as any physical works can, the memory of the disaster. I realise that nobody and nothing can really remove the memory for the people of the village or the rest of the country.

Mr. S. O. Davies: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in heavy rain a great deal of that tip streams down to the main road? I tried to make him and his office aware of this, and that coal is now being mined on the side of the hill where the tips are. I have emphasised, and must do so again, the dangers arising from subsidence where hillside tips are concerned.

Mr. Thomas: My hon. Friend has already been assured by me, and I assure him and the people of Aberfan again, that the Coal Board has given its word that it is not working under this tip.

Mr. S. O. Davies: That does not reduce the danger. May I tell my non-mining right hon. Friend that if subsidence takes place on each side of that tip because of the coal being mined, there exists a most unstable foundation to those tips, and disasters can happen. They have happened in the past.

Mr. Thomas: We are all anxious to see these tips removed. The Coal Board has been working hard on the technical detail of a scheme to achieve the moving of the tips. It hopes very soon to receive the scheme from its advisers, and then I hope to receive it from the Board. The scheme will then be fully and carefully explained to the representatives of the people of Aberfan.
The preparation of a scheme of this sort is a big and complex task. I ought to tell the House now that large-scale moving of tip material will not be practicable during the winter months. I believe—[Interruption.] Perhaps before I conclude I ought to deal with the question of finance.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: I rose a moment ago to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question at the same time as his hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies) rose. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House about the disposal of: he existing tips? The Merthyr Vale Colliery is still in action; it is a working colliery. Can he tell the House

what will happen under the new scheme with the spoil coming out of the pit? Will that also go behind the skyline of the moutain? Perhaps he is not in a position to say anything about it at the moment.

Mr. Thomas: I will get in touch with the hon. Gentleman about where the material is now being tipped. I promise to do so in a very short while.
The question of grant for authorities has been raised. The intention of the Bill is that the main responsibility must fall on the owners of the tip. The intention is deliberately to leave the percentage of grant flexible so that we shall be able to treat each case on its merits. That is the intention, and that is why Clause 25 is worded as it is.

Mr. Emery: Before the right hon. Gentleman comes to his conclusion, might I ask him to deal with the point that I raised with him about the mining inspectorate in relation to local authorities? Also, I do not see, in spite of his desire to be elusive about grants, why the permissiveness should not be changed—the "may" being altered to "shall". The amount of grant would then still be open for decision.

Mr. Thomas: But it may well be that no grant will be necessary, that the full responsibility will lie on somebody who can be traced and who ought to pay for it. That is why we must be flexible. We do not want to put on the taxpayers a burden that properly belongs to individuals. I do not think that individuals ought to get out of their responsibilities. That is the reason for the flexibility.

Mr. Nott: Can the right hon. Gentleman deal briefly with the point that I was making in my speech, where the owner cannot be traced and there is a definite safety factor in respect of shafts?

Mr. Thomas: I am talking about tips now, not shafts. Where the owner cannot be traced, and there is a definite danger, action will have to be undertaken, and the local authority has a responsibility. It will be advised. Local authorities will be able to call on the full expertise of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries.
I should have thought that every county council would have a highly qualified civil engineer on its staff. I


should be very surprised if any county council had not got one. He will also be able to get the advice and co-operation of the Inspectorate. [Interruption.] It is no good trying to deal with these matters by question and answer now when there is shortly to be a Committee stage. I have explained that the financial provision has deliberately been left flexible.
The local authority will, no doubt, turn to the Government when the owner cannot be found. I believe that the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) will discover that local authorities, by and large, accept, knowing how they are dealt with on questions of derelict land, that they will have a fair deal in this matter.
We keep faith tonight not only with the Tribunal of Inquiry, but also with those who live in the areas where there are tips and slagheaps and, as they are called in Scotland, bings, which have caused anxiety. I am confident, from what has been said tonight by hon. Members on both sides, that they are all equally anxious to see the Bill on the Statute Book and I hope, therefore, that the House will give it a Second Reading now and that the Committee stage will be dealt with in a constructive way.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

Orders of the Day — MINES AND QUARRIES (TIPS) [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision in relation to tips associated with mines and quarries and to prevent disused tips constituting a danger to members of the public, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of grants in respect of any expenditure incurred in or in connection with the carrying out of—

(a) operations to determine whether a disused tip, as defined in that Act, is stable,
(b) operations to ensure the stability of such a tip, and
(c) works of reinstatement consequential on any such operations as are referred to in paragraphs (b) above; and


(2) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable under any other enactment out of moneys provided by Parliament.—[Mr. Mason.]

9.32 p.m.

Mr. David Gibson-Watt: I want to put to the Minister the position we shall find ourselves in with regard to amenity questions during the Committee stage. If I understand the situation correctly, in agreeing to the Money Resolution—which we shall do in a few moments—we may debar ourselves from even discussing or putting Amendments in Committee which would widen the scope of the Bill to include amenity. This is a big problem.

9.33 p.m.

The Minister of Power (Mr. Roy Mason): Obviously, we cannot go beyond the three headings mentioned in the Money Resolution, but I can give an assurance on the question of amenity and dereliction. Hon. Members may be under a misapprehension and, if so, it is obvious that they have not kept up with recent legislation.
Reclamation, dereliction, eyesores and amenities are already covered by Acts on the Statute Book—the Local Government Act, 1966, the Industrial Development Act, 1966, and the Countryside Act, 1968—which give local authorities all the powers they require and, indeed, grants from the Government to deal with amenities. The Bill deals purely with safety and stability and seeks to ensure that an Aberfan slide will never occur again.

Mr. David Crouch: That is not good enough. We have been very fair with the right hon. Gentleman, but those Acts do not give opportunity for the removal of tips.

Mr. Mason: The hon. Gentleman has not kept up to date. There are many tips throughout the country, and not just in Wales. In Wales, there is a special position, of course, since the tips are on hillsides and are, therefore, likely to be less secure than, for example, in Yorkshire and the Midlands, where the tips are usually on flat land. For many years, local authorities, sometimes assisted by Exchequer grants and sometimes by the Coal Board, have been beautifying spoil heaps and blending them into the landscape. I myself have been partly responsible for assisting in this campaign. Only


in 1964 the West Riding County Council—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss, on the Money Resolution, the merits of some subject which hon. Members are saying may not be found within the scope of the Resolution.

Mr. Peter Emery: May I press the Minister one stage further? During the debate a number of hon. Members from both sides of the House said that the Bill did not go far enough and did not cover amenity problems. The Minister may be right, but back-bench Members may be right. We want to have an assurance that the right hon. Gentleman will not use the Money Resolution to ensure that this matter is not covered by the Bill when many hon. Members think that it should be.

Mr. Mason: I cannot give a ruling on that, but no doubt the Chairman of the Committee will.

Mr. John Fair: The Minister has just referred to the Midlands. May I send him an example of some outrageous quarry tips in the Midlands, in the heart of England, which have remained in their present dilapidated condition and in a dangerous state for many years, and ask him whether he will see whether he can do something about that?

Mr. Speaker: Order. That speech was quite out of order.

Mr. Emery: Mr. Emery rose—

Mr. Speaker: We are not in Committee. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to speak, he must ask leave of the House.

Mr. Emery: By leave of the House?

Mr. Speaker: If the House wishes to give it, but it is not usual to do so in these circumstances.

Mr. Emery: Have I the leave of the House?—I thank the House for its generosity.
Of course, I accept that it is not for the Minister to say how the Chairman of the Committee will interpret the Money Resolution, but he is expecting

much of me if he thinks that I will take what he said as a direct answer to my question. I was asking whether he would ensure that the Money Resolution would not be used to prevent many relevant issues from being raised in Committee, issues to which hon. Members have referred in the speeches today.

Mr. Mason: No doubt those points will be made in Committee, but I cannot enlarge the Money Resolution to cover amenity and dereliction and reclamation of spoil heaps when it is precisely worded to cover security. In other words, expenditure incurred by the Exchequer will be going to local authorities which will be spending it to determine whether a spoil heap is safe and to take remedial action as a result. That is all it covers.

Question put and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATION, &c, BILLS

Lords Message [6th November] communicating the Resolution, That it is desirable that in the present Session, the following classes of Bills be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament:

(1) All Consolidation Bills (whether public or private);
(2) Statute Law Revision Bills;
(3) Bills prepared pursuant to the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949, together with any memoranda laid pursuant to that Act and any representations made with respect thereto;
(4) Bills to consolidate any enactments with amendments to give effect to recommendations made by one or both of the Law Commissions, together with any Report containing such recommendations,

to be considered forthwith.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Lords Message considered accordingly.

Resolved,

That this House doth concur with the Lords in the said Resolution.

Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

Orders of the Day — HOUSE OF COMMONS (SERVICES)

Select Committee appointed to advise Mr. Speaker on the control of the accommodation and services in that part of the Palace of Westminster and its precincts, occupied by or on behalf of the House of Commons, and to report thereon to this House:—

Committee to consist of Sixteen Members:

Mr. Brian Batsford, Mr. Donald Chapman, Mr. Robert Cooke, Mr. Michael English, Mr. Frank Hooley. Dr. David Kerr, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, Mr. Robert Maxwell, Mr. Brian O'Malley, Sir Frank Pearson, Mr. Fred Peart, Mr. Francis Pym, Mr. John Silkin, Mr. David Steel, Dame Joan Vickers and Mr. William Whitelaw:

Five to be the Quorum:

Power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; and to report from time to time:

Power to appoint Sub-Committees and and to refer to such Sub-Committees any of the matters referred to the Committee:

Two to be the Quorum of every such Sub-Committee:

Every such Sub-Committee to have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; and to report to the Committee from time to time:

Committee to have power to report from time to time the Minutes of the Evidence taken before Sub-Committees and reported by them to the Committee:

Any Sub-Committee which may be appointed to deal with the organisation of, and the provision of services in, the Library to have the assistance of the Librarian.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Orders of the Day — STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS

Select Committee appointed to consider every Statutory Instrument, every Scheme or Amendment of a Scheme, requiring approval by Statutory Instrument, and every Draft of such an Instrument, Scheme or Amendment, being an Instrument, Scheme, Amendment or Draft which is laid before the House and upon which proceedings may be or might have

been taken in the House in pursuance of any Act of Parliament, every other general Statutory Instrument, and every Order which is subject to Special Parliamentary Procedure, with a view to determining whether the special attention of the House should be drawn to it on any of the following grounds:—

(i) that it imposes a charge on the public revenues or contains provisions requiring payments to be made to the Exchequer or any Government Department or to any local or public authority in consideration of any licence or consent or of any services to be rendered, or prescribes the amount of any such charge or payments;
(ii) that it is made in pursuance of an enactment containing specific provisions excluding it from challenge in the courts either at all times or after the expiration of a specified period;
(iii) that it appears to make some unusual or unexpected use of the powers conferred by the Statute under which it is made;
(iv) that it purports to have retrospective effect where the parent Statute confers no express authority so to provide;
(v) that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in the publication or in the laying of it before Parliament;
(vi) that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in sending a notification to Mr. Speaker under the proviso to subsection (1) of section four of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, where an Instrument has come into operation before it has been laid before Parliament;
(vii) that for any special reason its form or purport calls for elucidation;
(viii) that the drafting of it appears to be defective;

and if they so determine, to report to that effect:

Mr. Ronald Bell, Mr. Albert Booth, Mr. Walter Clegg, Sir Beresford Crad-dock, Mr. Arthur Davidson, Mr. James Dickens, Mr. Jack Dunnett, Mr. Fred Evans, Mr. Leslie Huckfield, Mr. Kevin McNamara, and Mr. R. Graham Page:

Committee to have the assistance of the Counsel to Mr. Speaker:

Power to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House, to report from time to time, and to report the Minutes of their Proceedings from time to time:

Power to require any Government department concerned to submit a memorandum explaining any Instrument or other Document which may be under their consideration or to depute a representative to appear before them as a Witness for the purpose of explaining any such Instrument or other Document:

Three to be the Quorum:

Instruction to the Committee that before reporting that the special attention of the House be drawn to any Instrument or other Document the Committee to afford to any Government Department concerned therewith an apportunity of furnishing orally or in writing such explanations as the Department think fit:

Power to report to the House from time to time any Memoranda submitted or other evidence given to the Committee by any Government Department in explanation of any Instrument or other Document:

Power to take evidence, written or oral, from Her Majesty's Stationery Office, relating to the printing and publication of any Instrument or other Document.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Orders of the Day — AGRICULTURE (SELECT COMMITTEE)

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That a Select Committee be appointed to report on the activities in England and Wales of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by 31st December, 1968.

That the Committee do consist of Twenty-five Members:

That Mr. William Baxter, Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith, Mr. Edynfed Hudson Davies, Dr. John Dunwoody, Mr. William Edwards, Mr. John Farr, Mr. Andrew Faulds, Mr. Tony Gardner, Mr. Garrett, Dr. Hugh Gray, Mr. Paul Hawkins, Mr. Bert Hazell, Mr. J. E. B. Hill, Mr. Emlyn Hooson, Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine, Mr. Peter M. Jackson, Mr. James Johnson, Mr. Michael Jopling, Mr. Clifford Kenyon, Mr. John P. Mackintosh, Mr. Peter Mills, Mr. Derek Page, Mr. Patrick Wall, Mr. Tudor Watkins and Mr. John Wells be Members of the Committee:

That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; to adjourn from place to place; and to admit

strangers during the examination of witnesses unless they otherwise order; and to report Minutes of Evidence from time to time:

That Six be the Quorum:

That the Committee have power to appoint Sub-Committees and to refer to such Subcommittees any of the matters referred to the Committee:

That every such Sub-Committee do have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; to adjourn from place to place; to report to the Committee from time to time; and to admit strangers during the examination of witnesses unless they otherwise order.

That the Committee have power to report from time to time to the Minutes of the Evidence taken before such Sub-Committees and reported by them to the Committee:

That Three be the Quorum of every such Sub-Committee.

That during the present Session the Committee have power to appoint persons with expert knowledge for the purpose of particular inquiries, either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the Committee's order of reference.

That the Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Agriculture in the last Session of Parliament together with Memoranda be referred to the Committee.—[Mr. O'Malley.]

Mr. John Farr: I wish to raise one or two points in relation to this Motion. I particularly wish to refer to HANSARD of last Tuesday when the hon. Gentleman the Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, who spoke for the Government on that occasion, replied to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith). In answer to him the hon. Gentleman said that a Select Committee on Agriculture would be set up at an early date. My hon. Friend retired to the North thoroughly satisfied with what the hon. Gentleman had said and expected that during the weekend, or probably tonight, such a Committee would be set up.
It is also right to say that my hon. Friend was not alone in expecting that as a result of what transpired in the House on Tuesday night a Select Committee would be set up tonight. Not a single member of that Select Committee was aware that the Committee was to be dis-established and banished in six weeks' time. This is my reason for raising this matter. I want to put some questions to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he can tell me why the Committee is to be virtually cut off in the middle of


what was a very painstaking study and survey into the activities of the Ministry of Agriculture in England and Wales. The Select Committee has been given roughly six weeks of Parliamentary time to come to a conclusion on the massive objective to which it has applied itself.
We have called a number of witnesses, but it is fair to say that we are barely in the middle of our task. To find that, unknown to all the members of the Committee to whom I have spoken, we have only until 31st December to conclude our deliberations and present our report is bad enough. But what happens thereafter? I am horrified that I can see no reference to the fact that the Committee will be reconstituted in January when the House returns from the Recess. If that is not the Government's intention, the House is entitled to an explanation. Are the Government dissatisfied with the work of the Select Committee? I have had the privilege of being a member of it for only a few months, but I well know the effective work which it did before that on the intricacies of the agricultural side of our application to get into the Common Market.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I ruled last year that we cannot discuss on this Motion the work of the previous Select Committee.

Mr. Farr: I am in your hands, Mr. Speaker. May I refer to the current Select Committee, which was hived off into certain Sub-Committees, two of which have reported. A great deal of work has been done on the workings and mechanics of the Ministry of Agriculture. I was privileged to be a member of one of the hived off Sub-Committees, namely, that dealing with horticulture. We sat on just as many mornings as the main Committee, but we never got anywhere near to considering the complete picture. If there were time, I could list a dozen or more subjects vitally important to horticulture which the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells), said would have to be deferred until the next Session of Parliament simply due to shortage of time and the fact that the Sub-Committee had to report.
Now that we are in the next Session of Parliament, not only is the Sub-Committee

on Horticulture not set up to enable a valuable piece of work to continue—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss on this Motion the non-setting up of the Sub-Committee on Horticulture. The hon. Gentleman will be in order if he addresses his remarks to the date 31st December, 1968, mentioned in the Motion.

Mr. Farr: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We did not have a chance to finish our task in the Sub-Committee on Horticulture. I am told by the members of the Select Committee on Agriculture whom I have had the opportunity of approaching since the Motion appeared on the Order Paper today that the Select Committee on Agriculture simply has no chance of completing its task by 31st December, 1968. The Minister probably knows of some of the curricula to which the Select Committee on Agriculture has applied itself in recent months. I could list quite a number of very important subjects which have never been discussed by the Select Committee and which will never be discussed if it is dissolved on 31st December, 1968.
Is the intention to discontinue the Select Committee by 31st December in accordance with the wishes of the House? The Select Committee was set up as a result of a Report of the Committee on Procedure which was endorsed by hon. Members. In the absence of very sound reasons—perhaps a failing in duty by its members or a lack of usefulness—I cannot see why the Government should decline to continue the Committee after 31st December this year. Some of the topics with which the Committee still have to deal involve millions of £s of Government money and are important topics. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are responsible for forestry and are spending millions of £s every year on forestry.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman may mention all of these subjects, but he may not discuss any of them.

Mr. Farr: I have tried to point out how important is forestry, but, Mr. Speaker, bearing your Ruling in mind, I will refer to other subjects which there


has not yet been an opportunity to discuss in the Select Committee. There has been no opportunity in the Select Committee to discuss in any detail the last and very important outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. We are awaiting a report by the Northumberland Committee—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is drifting at once into discussing the subject, and he may not drift. This is a procedural Motion. He must address himself to the proposal that the Committee should be set up and that its form should be as laid down in the Motion. I take it that his main objection is to the date in the Motion. He must link his remarks to that.

Mr. Farr: With the greatest possible respect, Mr. Speaker, I am trying to list the subjects with which the Select Committee have not dealt and to show how, in the very limited time suggested, it would be impossible for the Committee properly to conclude their deliberations.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have stated that the hon. Member has the right to list the subjects. What he cannot do is to discuss them.

Mr. Farr: Another very important matter yet to be discussed by the Select Committee is the impact on the industry of the Training Board for horticulture, forestry and agriculture. Another matter which has not been considered in any depth is the operation of the new Meat and Livestock Commission. It has been set up and is beginning to get going, but we do not know how it will work, and millions of £s of taxpayers' money is involved in the operation of that Commission.
I do not want to detain the House, for the hour is late, but I hope that in the very limited time for which I have spoken—I have been very brief indeed—I have given the Minister an idea of the concern felt, at any rate by Members of the Committee from this side of the House, about the probability that all the work which we have put in will come to an end at the end of the year.

9.53 p.m.

Mr. Brian O'Malley (Lord Commissioner of the Treasury): The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) referred to the fact that the setting up of the Select Committee on Agriculture was

mentioned on Tuesday night of this week, when I gave an assurance that the Committee would be set up as soon as possible. I said that I hoped that it would be set up within the next few days. I thought, therefore, that it would meet both the desire and the convenience of the House if we set up this Committee, along with other Select and Specialist Committees, as soon as possible. The Motion, therefore, appears on the Order Paper this evening. I take it that the hon. Member for Harborough is not complaining about that.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Member will speak a little more loudly, so that he may be heard in the Press Gallery.

Mr. O'Malley: I assume that the hon. Member is taking exception to the fact that the difference between this Motion and the similar Motion last Session is that the Committee are required to report by 31st December, 1968. First, last Session the House operated as many Select Committees as its present arrangements and facilities could cope with. Secondly, while recognising the keen interest in agriculture of the hon. Member and other hon. Members on both sides of the House—including my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Dr. John Dunwoody), who is in the Chamber—I have to point out that some hon. Members are interested in matters outside those dealt with by the Select Committee on Agriculture and are precluded from any discussion of those subjects in Specialist Committees until changes can be made in the ranges of the Committees.
The hon. Member for Harborough said that if the Specialist Committee on Agriculture were to be cut off at 31st December, 1968, it would be virtually in the midst of its work. With respect to him, I understand that that is not the case. I think that the whole House has every confidence in the composition of the Specialist Committee on Agriculture and feels that it can complete its work by 31st December, or at least complete the Report upon which it is at present engaged.
The hon. Member asked whether the Government were dissatisfied with the work of the Select Committee. As he would expect me to reply, I do not agree


with any assertion that the Government, or, for that matter, the House—although we have not yet seen the Report of the Select Committee—are in any way dissatisfied with the work of the Select Committee. It is simply a question of attempting to set up Specialist Committees which will give hon. Members with various interests opportunity of discussing in the Specialist Committees subjects which particularly interest them.
I must tell the hon. Gentleman and the House that at the moment it is the firm decision of the Government, to give help to other Members who are interested in other subjects, to conclude the work of the Specialist Committee on Agriculture by the end of this year. We are confident that the Committee can do this.
Since, in fairness to the hon. Gentleman, I have made the position absolutely clear, and as we put the Motion on the Order Paper as soon as we possibly could so that the Committee could get on with its work and complete its report, I trust that the hon. Gentleman will allow the Motion to go through so that there is no further delay in setting up the Committee and it can present its report to the House by 31st December, as we are all hopeful and confident that it will.

9.56 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: I find the hon. Gentleman's statement somewhat surprising, and I should like to know whether what he has just told the House is known to any members of the Committee, the Chairman included. He has said a good deal about the Committee's finishing its work. It has not been my privilege to be a member of the Committee, but my impression is that that was just one of the many subjects the Committee was to deal with. When it was set up the Committee deliberated on what topics it would deal with first.
I must register a considerable protest and ask, if it is the decision of the Government that this Committee has got to go because other Committees are needed, why single out the Select Committee on Agriculture? I should have thought it had done conspicuously good work. I am on record as having said at this Box that the Reports it had made hitherto had been of considerable value.
I hope, therefore, we may have some more information for the benefit of the House.

9.57 p.m.

Dr. John Dunwoody: I welcome the speed with which my hon. Friend has brought this Motion before the House, but I must express some anxieties and doubts which I have about it. I am not very happy about the date, 31st December, 1968, because I doubt whether this will give the Committee sufficient time even to complete its present investigation.
The field which we have been studying over the last 12 months is a very extensive one. I have had the honour to be on the Sub-Committee on Horticulture. We have covered a vast range of subjects, but not as many as most of us would like. I have some doubt whether about six weeks of Parliamentary time which the date 31st December gives us is sufficient for us to complete investigation of the subject we are in the midst of investigating at present. There are a number of other subjects which we reported we hoped to be able to investigate in the future.
Another point I would make ties up with one which my hon. Friend made about the expansion of the Select Committee and Specialist Committee concept. The Motion suggests ways that the Committee shall consist of 25 members. I had the honour of being on the Committee from its inception, when there were only 14 of us. The number was increased to 16. We have been 25 for this last year. It is a very large number, and I think that most of who have been on the Committee throughout its history have found this to be a rather unwieldy number and that we were not such an effective Committee as we were when we were a smaller number.
In view of the difficulty experienced in manning other Committees, I have doubts whether 25 is the ideal number. The attendance, in numerical terms, with 25 members has been even lower than it was with 14 or 16 members. This Committee is an important one, and I would not like—

It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — TRANSPORT (UNLICENSED VEHICLES)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]

10.0 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The subject I wish to raise this evening is an old one. It is the question of to speak about the growing practice of deliberately evading payment of the road fund licence. I will not go into all the facts and figures which I could produce to show that there are thousands of vehicles, private, commercial, large and small, that are being reported for this evasion. In many thousands of cases, no action is taken, although the G.L.C. and other licensing authorities are now catching up.
I have frequently asked the police to take action when I have seen them between 1.30 and 2 o'clock going in and out of their stations in and around London and passing hundreds of vehicles without attempting to report them. Only this week an inspector told me that this offence is so prevalent that if it is reported it takes a long time for the G.L.C. to do anything, and there are often no records of registration. The police are getting tired of this situation.
On 3rd October at 2.30 p.m., I noticed an Austin Mini with no licence pull into a garage. I told the driver that he was committing an offence to have the car on the road. Aggressively, he demanded, "What's it got to do with you?" I said, "As a taxpayer and ratepayer, I do not think it is right that you should be driving on the road illegally and not paying tax." The garage attendant who had not heard the earlier exchange, came along and asked, "What have we got, a fight between the police and a Member of Parliament?". I had not disclosed who I was.
I then said to the driver of the vehicle, which had the registration No. 529 WKT, "You are not a police officer, are you?". to which he replied, "Oh, yes." I said, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." He said, "Who are you?" I replied, "I am a Member of Parliament. "His attitude changed and he said, "I have only just bought the car." I said," It does not make any difference,

you are not supposed to be on the road with an untaxed vehicle, and you are the one who should be enforcing the law." He did not say that he had just licensed it or had just applied for a licence; he said that he had only just bought the car. On the previous four or five occasions when I had reported similar offences no action had been taken. The policemen concerned had asked me not to report them as they were afraid for their jobs and families, so I did not do so. In this instance I decided to report the matter, and I went to the local police station. I did not divulge who I was, but when I made the general complaint the attitude was that they could not care less. It was only when I asked them to put in a written report saying what action would be taken and divulged who I was that there was any attempt to say that something should be done.
On Thursday, 3rd October, I telephoned the G.L.C. to discover if the vehicle was licensed. The G.L.C.'s Chief Enforcement Officer ascertained that it was an Essex registration and not a London one. Later that day, he telephoned in my absence to report that the vehicle was not taxed on that day. He was asked to ring me back so that I could get it from him verbally. He did so, and then I asked him to put it in writing, following which I wrote to the Home Secretary and to the Superintendent of Police.
On 10th October, a week later, I received a letter from the Chief Enforcement Officer at County Hall, in which he said:
With regard to vehicle 529 WKJ, as advised by telephone last week, the file of documents is now held by Essex County Council and shows that the last licence expired on 30th June, 1968. The registered owner is a resident of Grays, Essex. We telephoned yesterday "—
that would be the 9th—
to ascertain whether any application for re-licensing the vehicle had been received by them, but none had up to that date.
Subsequently, I received a letter from the Assistant Commissioner, New Scotland Yard. It was dated 21st October, and it reached me on 23rd October. In what I say, I do not mean that the Assistant Commissioner is whitewashing the offence. However, in my opinion, he allowed himself to be fobbed off and permitted it to be whitewashed on the


basis of the information given to him. He said in his letter:
Inquiry has been made, and it has been confirmed that the police officer who was driving the car bought it from a garage on 13th August and straight away took it to a mechanic to be examined.
If ever anyone has listened to fairy stories, he should hear this:
The mechanic found a number of faults on the car, worked on it to put them right, and completed the repair work on 2nd October. On that day, the officer sent off the registration book, test certificate and insurance certificate with a cheque to the Essex County Council, Chelmsford, and asked that the car should be licensed from 1st August to cover his use of it on the 13th. He then notified the change of ownership. This information has been verified by inquiry from the mechanic…It is understood that although admittedly an Excise offence had been committed on the day you saw the car, it is not a matter in which, in the circumstances, the Greater London Council would take any action.
The officer never said, as one would expect, "I have just applied for the licence." He said that he had only just bought it, yet it is admitted that it was bought on 13th August. There must have been a lot of repair work done to the vehicle for it to be in dock all that time. Then again, if a person intends to drive a car to a place where it is to be tested, he does not need a licence. If he was only taking it to be tested, why need he offer to pay back tax for the previous two months when he was not supposed to be using the car?
Strangely enough, I have discovered, since putting down Questions and disputing the matter with the police, that they find that an application came in afterwards, and the form was dated 2nd October, the day before I saw it. These forms, of course, can be obtained from the Post Office, and it is a simple matter to put down any date one chooses. I have asked to see the date of the test certificate, but I am told that they cannot supply it. I have also asked to see the date of the insurance, but that cannot be supplied.
This is one of five instances of which I know. I suggest that there is a lot of this going on in the police force. Since I have raised this matter, I have had a number of letters from the general public pointing out instances in which the police have been asked to take action but, rather strangely, have taken none, particularly

when their own vehicles are concerned. One correspondent says:
Letters have been sent to both Scotland Yard and the County Hall regarding this matter with no apparent effect.
This letter, from Barnes, refers to a number of private cars driven by police and river police officers parked in and around a police garage.
It has long been the subject of conversation that a number of their cars parked in this area while the owners are on duty do not bear tax discs.
My correspondent then gives a list of vehicles. I phoned the G.L.C. today. I was told that, subject to some being in the post at the Post Office and subject to some being now in and applied, at yesterday's date not one vehicle on this list was licensed. I can give all the numbers.
I can quote other instances where I have spoken to police officers. I have another letter here from Wood Green which gives the number of the vehicle, the police officer's name and address and so on. I do not know whether the police are adopting the attitude, "As everyone is doing it, why shouldn't we?" If they are, perhaps all of us should do the same. If it is so difficult to get enforcement in this matter, I suggest that it is unfair that the ordinary law-abiding taxpayer should have to pay his road tax, insurance, road test certificate and various other taxes whilst not only many amongst the general public but many police officers are dodging it.
This probably could be done in a much better way, but time will not permit me to go into it. I want an assurance that some action will be taken to inform the police that, to my knowledge at least, half a dozen police officers, some in uniform, are driving unlicensed vehicles. Indeed, one one-occasion a police officer with a raincoat over his uniform pulled up beside me at some traffic lights. Quite by accident I saw that his car was un-taxed. I said, "You should not be doing that." He said, "Don't delay me. Don't delay me. I am on my way to give evidence in court." I said, "Wait a moment. Do not be in such a hurry," He said, "I am late." I said, "I do not care whether you are late or not." He said, "I have to go to court. I am a police officer." After a lot of argument I eventually found that his car was unlicensed. He, again, was about to get it done. He said that he had not been using it, he had


only used it that day, and he was about to license it. I have the details here. However, he said that he had a wife and children and would I not reveal his name. I did not.
On another occasion I was actually in Tottenham Police Court. I went to see how the cases were going. Again, I saw a police officer in uniform come into the courtyard with an unlicensed vehicle. I spoke to a police inspector. His attitude, before he knew who I was, was, "What has it to do with you; why should you worry about it?" I said, "But it is the job of the police to see that the law is enforced." After disclosing who I was, he said that he would investigate. Strangely enough, the vehicle had only just been bought and was in process of being registered. Like the first case I mentioned, it had just been bought. But the police officer should have known that August to October is not just bought. The evidence that I have from the G.L.C. shows that 4th October was the first date that he had registered change of ownership.
What is happening is very serious and dangerous. Many people are not paying taxes because they cannot get a certificate of roadworthiness for their vehicles. The result is that they are driving on the roads with dangerous vehicles. Because these people save money by not getting their vehicles taxed, they save the money which they would have to pay on insurance. Worse still, many people are not troubling to register their vehicles at all. This means that when there are accidents, or hit-and-run offences, the police are unable to trace the cars because they have not been registered for five, six, seven and sometimes 10 years. No action can be taken by anyone.
It is not a question of only private vehicles breaking the law. To my knowledge there is at the moment a five-ton sand and gravel lorry parked in north London. The residents of that area know that the vehicle has not been licensed for 18 months. The driver of the vehicle has five such vehicles and should be paying about £300 a year tax, but he will not pay the money because if he taxes them the authorities might catch up with him and find that he is earning £300–£400 a week tax-free by carrying rubble. The more loads he carries the more he earns.
The sort of thing to which I have been referring is going on all over the country. Unless the Home Secretary can ensure that the law is enforced, he should ask his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to drop the tax altogether and introduce a different system of car registration, and put the charge on to petrol or something else.

10.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees): I apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan) who, under my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, is responsible for this matter. My hon. Friend was taken ill this afternoon, and I stepped in at short notice. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) that I have made it my business to look very carefully into this matter.
My hon. Friend has raised a subject similar to the one he raised last July. His zeal for the revenue is well known, but this time in correspondence with the Home Office, in an interview reported by a newspaper, and in some of the things he has said tonight, he has made some quite unjustified aspersions about the police in general and I should like to deal with some aspects of this issue.
Responsibility for collecting vehicle excise taxes rests on the county and county borough councils. They are also responsible for the enforcement of that part of the law, and in this they are assisted by the police who report to them when they find apparently unlicensed vehicles being used on the road.
The House will appreciate that there are other calls on the limited police resources. It is for the chief police officer of the area to decide how to use these scarce resources, but during the 12 months to 31st October last about 167,500 cases of apparently unlicensed vehicles were reported by the Metropolitan Police to the G.L.C. This is an indication that the police take this responsibility quite seriously, and do enforce the law. It is for the licensing authority in whose area the offence is alleged to have been committed to follow up the police report and decide whether a prosecution ought to be brought.
Not every apparently unlicensed vehicle is, in fact, unlicensed, and not in every case is it right to prosecute the driver of an unlicensed vehicle. There is, for example, the possibility of the licensing authority's, to use the legal jargon, compounding for a mitigated penalty or, in non-legalistic terms, agreeing to accept a sum of money above the licence fee and not prosecuting. The House may remember that when we debated my hon. Friend's Motion last July my hon. Friend at the Ministry of Transport gave figures which showed that the number of vehicle Excise offences successfully prosecuted amounted to about one in 40 of the total number of vehicles registered. This figure was not disproportionate to the number of unlicensed, cars on the road as disclosed in spot checks and samples.
The case raised by my hon. Friend tonight has been investigated by the Commissioner of Police, who has decided that no grounds for action by him in regard to the officer have been disclosed—no grounds for action by him on the officer as an officer in the police force—but the relevant facts have been reported to the G.L.C. for such action as it may think fit, because it is the authority concerned.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary concurs with the Commissioner's decision. The facts are that on 13th August the constable bought a second-hand car and immediately took it to a mechanic, who examined it. A number of faults were discovered and the car was left for the necessary repairs. The repairs were done in the mechanic's spare time and the work was not completed until about 2nd October. The vehicle was registered in the name of the constable's father, who lives in Essex.
In an application dated 2nd October, the constable applied to the Essex County Council for a vehicle licence for the car to run from 1st August, which is the date my hon. Friend gave. He took possession of the car on the same day and began to use it. The licence was issued by the Essex County Council on 4th October. This is contrary to the information possessed by my hon. Friend, but there is a reason for this.
The use of the car on 13th August and 2nd and 3rd October may have constituted offences under the Vehicle (Excise)

Act, 1962. The decision whether an excise prosecution under the Act shall be undertaken rests with the G.L.C. and not with the police. Since my hon. Friend saw the car on 3rd October within the G.L.C. area and the matter was reported to the G.L.C. and it, presumably, is considering—amongst other things—whether a prosecution should be brought, I should not and cannot comment on that aspect of the case.
But I make a distinction. That is different from the police deciding to take disciplinary action within the police force.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: My hon. Friend does not have to worry. They have already decided. The Commissioner of Police has told me that they will not prosecute.

Mr. Rees: I do not think that that is true. It would not be for the Commissioner to decide.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: He has told me that the G.L.C. has decided not to prosecute.

Mr. Rees: I have no information what the G.L.C. has decided, but it is proper for the G.L.C. to decide.
It is right to make one point. I bring to my hon. Friend's notice the case of Natrass v Gibson, reported in The Times on 25th October last. This case was heard in the High Court and the circumstances seemed to be similar to those of the case about which my hon. Friend has complained. In that case the High Court decided that an offence had been committed, but the judges were critical of the prosecution having been brought.
My hon. Friend claims that his telephone inquiries of the G.L.C. on 3rd October and the letter he received on 10th October show that if the licence was dated 4th October, it was not issued until later. There is an implied slur on the staff of the Essex County Council and I am sure that there should not be. I have nothing to add to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, in which he said that he was satisfied that there was no substance in the allegation that the Assistant Commissioner had deceived my hon. Friend.
The position, as we understand it from the Essex County Council, is that the pressure of work in the licensing section is such that although an application is


dealt with quickly it may be several days before it can be associated with the file relating to the vehicle. To minimise inconvenience to members of the public the procedure adopted is to deal with applications as they arrive, to issue licences straight away, and to associate the papers with the file at leisure, when the action is completed.
This means that there is a period when the two things have not been matched. That is why my hon. Friend was told on 10th October that the records did not disclose an application up to the 9th, although the licence had already been issued. It was not duplicity on the part of the officials or the Commissioner of Police. I have looked carefully into this. There is a period of time when, if somebody rings up, officials pull out a file and the fact that the licence is issued is not revealed.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I accept without question that, having had the discussion with me, he went along for the licence, but I could prove to my hon. Friend that, as it said in the Press reports, this vehicle has been used between August and October; would he look at the case again?

Mr. Rees: I have already said that the car had been used, and that the matter has now gone for prosecution.
My hon. Friend asked what "straight away" meant, when he stopped the constable and asked him, "When did you get this?". I cannot explain what the constable meant. All I know is that the car was taken to the mechanic after it was bought on 13th August, and that the mechanic confirms that he had it on or about that date. The next question is: if the car only completed its test the day before the incident, what was the date of the first certificate? The M. O. T. test certificate was dated 9th March. An insurance certificate was issued on 16th September for 30 days, and when the car was used for a road test it was not legally permitted—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Not to take the car. It is legally permitted to take the car to a road testing station to have it tested.

Mr. Rees: But it did not go to a road testing station because it had been tested way back—

Mr. Speaker: Order. It will help if the hon. Gentleman addresses the Chair.

Mr. Rees: I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker.
The other point is: was the application submitted before 3rd October? All we know is that the document was issued on 4th October, and all the evidence we have is that it was sent off on the 2nd.
Those are some of the small points which make the general situation clear. There is the general point about the police in general. My hon. Friend has made allegations about the police in different parts of North and North-East London. This one case does not prove that the police are engaging in large-scale fiddling in this respect and neither, unless my hon. Friend will give us chapter and verse, do the two or three other cases.
With regard to the case of the 5-ton lorry, I would ask my hon. Friend to let us know the facts. In general, the single case with which I have dealt is a matter for the G.L.C. and no one else. The G.L.C. knows the facts: it is the prosecuting authority.
There is no evidence that the police are lax in this respect, but I ask my hon. Friend to give us the facts, and not generalisations. I am sure that he would not have mentioned the case unless it had happened, but it is very difficult for us to deal with cases unless we have the facts.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I have the facts—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member has exhausted his right to speak. He may interrupt before the Minister sits down, if he wants to.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Ten o'clock.